Blog Number 131

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

This morning started great.  Right at 6 AM, there was a knock at my door and a man wheeled in breakfast.  I had ordered this the night before so I was up and ready for it.

This was about $5 US and the fruit on my plate was very nicely presented.  Some of the fruit I could not quite make out but it was good.  The coffee was good and the basket contained many different pastries and breads.  Also there was some jam and 3 small bottles that were labeled "caramel" so I am not sure what was in them really as caramel seems an odd thing to spread on your toast.

The view from my 5th floor hotel is nice as well.

I am in the center of the city it seems.  A co-worker from near here met us in the lobby at around 8 and we were off to work.  After about a 30 minute drive we arrived at the building which is newly renovated.  For now there are only about 15 people in the building but it will hold about 800 eventually.  We got connected to the network very quickly and were able to do some catch up on email that had been piling up.  There were several other co-workers flying in from Buenos Aires but the airline went on strike this morning so they had to find another flight with a different company.  This was good timing for us as just yesterday we flew with this same airline and we would have been stuck in Chile!

Lunch was next door at a place that just opened yesterday.  I do not quite know how to explain the setup but it was sort of like a cafeteria.  I trusted a co-worker and just ordered what he had.  Basically I had 3 different kinds of empanadas and they were very good.  We were still not able to get to a bank to exchange our money for pesos so we had to rely on them to pay with a promise to repay them.  We worked until about 6:30 and then headed back to the hotel.  Evidently the custom here is to eat dinner around 9 PM so we are meeting in the lobby in about 20 minutes to head out for dinner.  I will have to get used to this as I am ready for a quick bite and then to bed since I got up at 3 AM central time this morning.

Everyone is very nice and apologized for their English but they speak it very well.  I feel bad for not even knowing more than a few phrases in Spanish.  I will try to watch some more Argentina TV tonight and see if I can catch a few phrases.  Until tomorrow.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon