Argentine Culture

The Argentines are a very friendly nation, they greet everyone with kisses on both cheeks and also say goodbye the same way. They are very sociable and love to talk. They spend alot of time sitting outside the front of their homes sipping their mate and passing the time of day with one another. Public displays of affection are very common, I have seen a lot of couples openly kissing and canoodling in the street and in parks.

The men appreciate women openly on the street by making a chchchch noise as they pass by, this has happened to me a couple of times and I just keep on walking...as unfortunatley it´s not been done by any good looking men...

Argentines are very laid back and everything is done at a much slower pace here, which is good in some respects but can get a little frustrating. Classes at school for instance, never start on time, and the pupils seem to drag out the simplest exercises they are given by chatting to each other, asking the teacher irrelevant questions and just messing around in general. The teachers don´t seem concerned about this hence very little seems to get done each lesson. Every week of school so far there had been a national holiday or a teachers strike, so I have hardly been to public school, and don´t feel I have achieved much so far.

The Argentinians are not keen on Americans, or Australians, as Jenny discovered when she went into a shop near our house. After she had bought something, the shopkeeper asked if she was American or Australian, when Jenny admitted she was Australian, he said in English ´we don´t respect you´ and told her to get out his shop.

There seems to be a carelessness too, there have been a couple of incidents at the Animal Rehabiliation centre where Jenny has been working. In her first week, a ferret type animal was put in an enclosure next to a monkey, monkeys like to put their arms through the cage bars, the money did this, and the ferret ate the flesh of both his arms, the monkey had to be put down as it was in so much pain.
Last week, there was a visitor to the centre who suddenly spotted a baby leopard outside the enclosure up a tree. The enclosure was havng work done on it and they hadn´t secured it properly the night before, and so the leopard had managed to get out. They had to dart it to make it drowsy and then push it from behind to get it out the tree and catch it in a net.