Hurry... Santa Ees Comeeng

While I don’t claim to be a PEZ® aficionado, I do remember several years ago getting a Speedy Gonzalez PEZ® dispenser and thinking it was really neat. It was cool to have a PEZ® dispenser that was a little out of the ordinary, i.e. not the normal Spiderman® (does he need a ®?), Batman, Superman or He-Man dispensers. I remember losing Speedy and scouring each and every convenience store checkout counter for another Speedy Gonzalez to no avail. Would Speedy ever be replaced? Could I ever really replace Speedy? What does Speedy Gonzalez have to do with this post? Well, let me tell you.

Hopefully you remember Speedy Gonzalez from the old Tom and Jerry cartoons so I don’t have to take the time to explain who he is. Now think back as to how Speedy spoke. Think of his accent. Now imagine Speedy Gonzalez singing “Santa Clause is coming to town”. It would sound more like “Santy Claus ees comeeng too tooown”. THAT is what Claire sounds like. When we arrived, we put Claire into an Argentine pre-school where the instruction is conducted in English, but all of the activities are in Spanish. So they have been learning Christmas songs right before the summer break (reverse seasons, remember), and Claire came home earlier this week singing like Speedy Gonzalez. Her native Argentine school teachers teaching a native English speaker a Christmas song in English—I’m sure that’s exactly what her teachers sounded like. “Ees good, ya?

After finally settling back in, Candace® and I finally decided to go see Harry Potter’s Seventh Movie Part One of Two of the Deathly Hallows. There is a movie theater here called Hoyts Premium. For whatever the country lacks in traffic planning, they made up with Hoyts Premium. For 45 pesos (about $11.25) per person, there is a separate movie entrance area (with non-public restrooms), a separate waiting area complete with a hostess to announce when your movie is about to begin, pairs of leather full-size recliners in the theater, with a full menu and “call” button in the chair should your drink be too low. The food costs extra, but if you wanted, you could have a three-course meal (smoked salmon) for about 150 pesos per person (less than $40).

The movie theater is located about 20 mins from our house at a mall that houses the only Walmart in close proximity to us, and the parking garage has little sensors on it to tell you how many spots are available on each level of the parking garage. And it’s easy to find an empty spot cause the sensors are hanging from the ceiling and show a red light if the space is full, or green if empty, so you can see from far away where there is some parking. With all of this high tech stuff, you’d think it would cost an arm and a leg. Our three-hour parking (this is INSIDE the city limits of Buenos Aires, mind you) costs a whopping 6.6 pesos (less than $2).

We’re finding that while there are still some good deals to be had around the city (deluxe movie for about the same cost as a normal movie in the States, cheap parking, cheap labor), most goods are outrageously expensive and continue to get more expensive. The official government statistics and private estimators have a Grand Canyon sized gap in what they believe to be the current rate of inflation. We have certainly noticed a difference (not in our favor) in the short time we have been here.

“Ándale, ándale, arriba, arriba, ‘cause Santa ees comeeng.”