Side Walks of Rosario

It's 8:30 in the morning and a city cleaner is sweeping the gutters. Businesses and apartment buildings throw water on their part of the side walk every morning and then sweep the water and trash into the gutters. Then this city worker sweeps and gathers the leaves and garbage into a bag and it is picked up later. They do this every day and this street is especially clean! Usually there are papers blowing all over the sidewalks. We walk through a lot of water on the sidewalks on our way to work because almost every building is washing their part of the sidewalk.

The varied colors of the sidewalks are where they have patched them. They use little square tiles for the sidewalks.  Some lay flat, but most are loose and tippy so you can twist your ankle very easily.

And then you'll come across just rocky dirt which is no fun in the rain!

All of these pictures are the sidewalks that we use to go to work everyday. Sorry about the color of these photos below, a filter was on my camera and I didn't notice it.

We walk over 2 miles on these sidewalks everyday. I can't take my eyes off the sidewalk or my foot will fall into a hole or step on an unstable paver or dog poop (that's another story).

The plumbing and utilities are placed under the sidewalks for accessibility.  This way they don't have to dig up the streets.

Watch your step and certainly watch out for doggie dudu which is all over the sidewalks.

If the Travel Bureau of Rosario is listening, I have a suggestion.  They could increase visitor's to the city if they'd just create or enforce an ordinance that required dog owners to clean up this filthy mess.
I'm quite certain that this one problem alone is keeping vacationers away.

Actually, as I look at all the pavement pictures, they somehow look nicer than when I am walking on them!!

Primary Program

Last Sunday we attended two Sacrament Meetings and they both had their Primary Program! Best Sunday yet!!! This Ward had 10 Primary children and that included their nursery age children and one Deacon (picture below, left side, long hair). Yes, yes, I took a picture during Sacrament meeting! I had to document those 3 fabulous red ties that the 3 young men were wearing, they were made of felt! They were cut straight across on the bottom and had an elastic neck band. Two of the ties hit the boys at their chest, the other tie went to the (shorter) boys belt. The Primary must have made them for presentations like this and use them year after year. 

This Stake Center had beautiful benches but they are not bolted to the floor.  They move around and slide around when you sit down and tip if you lean foreword.  All the buildings we have been in so far have benches like these.

Below they had the fathers sing with the Primary children and the whole Bishopric went up.  The Primary Presidency were all standing and moving around the whole presentation.  They were either chasing after the Nursery age children or shuffling children to the podium or being the Primary chorister. Bless their hearts, they earned many blessing this Sunday, they worked so hard!!! 

It was a lovely Primary Program and they had no pianist for any of the musical numbers! I did find out that the little 5 year old children can read Spanish faster than I can, very, very depressing!

Argentina Toilet Paper

I'm sure my daughters were wondering when I would blog about toilet paper. I take toilet paper on every trip. I have my favorite, Charmin. I buy it in large quantities at Costco. It would not fit in my suit case this trip, nor could I bring a years supply. I was hoping that Argentina would have Charmin toilet paper.... no such luck.

Alan describes the above toilet paper to crumbling up a sheet of lined writing paper and using it, I agree. It does have some cute pictures on it and the blue design one even smells like baby powder (really smells and probably is not good for you to use). So the best one available so far is the Scott pink and blue pkg. The others are now on a shelf for our emergency preparedness kit.

We even tried their paper towels (below), not bad but very expensive. We might be moving on to try some of their tissues (which come in very small pkgs). 

Missing the comforts of home and this fixture thing below on the right is looking better and better as time goes by.

Sleeping on the Streets of Rosario

Just when I start feeling safe about walking the streets of Rosario we come across something like this. This is 4 buildings away from our front door!

At least he got some card board to lay on and cover himself! This was taken at 8:30 in the morning and our street is very, very busy and loud. The broken glass, goblet and bottle just add to this picture story!

Then here (below) is another sleeper on the street, but he was not on our street.

And then we get to the street where our office is and we find this guy!! You can see the gate to our office building!  I thought about giving this guy a swift kick in the rear!! But wait... that's not what a missionary should do or think!! So I just took the picture and ran into our office!

What else can I say, I think I've said too much!!