Fall in Rosario

It's Fall in Rosario

We are seeing lots of yellow and red colors.

Squash and pumpkins of every size and shape are in the market.

These potatoes are in the store to buy and they actually look pretty clean.  I've seen so much dirt on them that you can't see what color they are. These pictures look better than what they really are, most are caked in mud! In fact, these pictures are considered washed!

 Grocery carts are very interesting in our Coto market. They never push straight and they all are very dirty! This has nothing to do with fall, but the dirt covered potatoes made me look at my dirty cart.

Trees on the street where we live are changing from green to yellow and leaves are falling all over the sidewalks!! With all the leaves on the streets it makes it hard to see where the dog poop is on the streets!!!  We have to really watch the sidewalks now.

Leaves are falling all around, on the roof tops on the ground......

Happy Fall Argentina!

Rosario One-Way Streets

One word describes One-Way Streets in Rosario....

FABULOUS!! I love them!!!! 

It makes driving and walking on the city streets so much easier than two-way traffic. Every other street heads an opposite direction.  Cars can only park on one side of the street, not both sides. Almost all cars run on natural gas here and it is such a blessing!  Otherwise the car exhaust smoke and fumes on the streets would be horrible. In the picture above look at the beautiful cobblestone street.  They are beautiful to look at and horrible to drive on. They are starting to pave over them, it is so sad.

 One nice thing is that the cars obey the traffic lights!! One-way streets without a traffic light is another story.  It is a free-for-all with no signal light!  Taxi cabs seem to think they have the right of way at all times unless they are at an intersection with a bus.  Buses win the right of way at any intersection for obvious reasons!

And since we are on the subject of streets and cars, Argentines have taken parallel parking to an all-time level.  If you are not touching the car in front of you or in back of you, you are not parallel  parking.

The picture below is of a silver car that pushed the cute blue car in front of them into the back of the tire on the black car in front and dented the hood on the darling blue car!! The people across the street saw us taking a picture of the dent and chased us down to tell us they saw the whole thing.  They thought it was our car and we were going to the police (who would do nothing, by the way).

If you find a spot to park in and you won't fit, you just get out and push the car either in front or in back of the empty spot so they touch another car and back in. When you park your car you put it in neutral so people can push your car!! Everyone does this, go figure!!! 

Taxi cabs when they are waiting in a line for a customer turn off their motors and when they need to move up a space in line, they also get out and push their car!  There are also billboards everywhere around town to hide bad areas or fallen down buildings!!!

Security in Rosario

We walk by this beautiful flowering vine everyday on our way to the office.  We have enjoyed it's blooms from Spring to Fall!  Right above this vine is a strange looking head building with 2 eyes (at least that is what it looks like to me).

I never really thought too much about it until I found out what it is.  It is a guard station, pill box station, police gunnery station or security station.  This is on our street and this Does Not make me feel more secure.

I have not seen any guns poking out of the holes yet, but I look up at those holes everyday just incase!

And as you can see by the trees, it's Fall in Argentina!

Fiat 600

Our friend Marcos has a sweet ride!  He owns this Fiat 600, 1972

He loves it! FYI, every car in Argentina is a stick shift, no automatic cars down here.

He drove to Cordoba, Argentina to buy it and drove it back to Rosario without a problem.

After 5 months of driving it, Marcos is selling it.  If Argentina would let us bring it to the States without a hassle, we would. Only way for us to get it to the States easily is to drive it.  No Thank You

Gabriel

Meet Gabriel Taborda, our friend

The picture below is a few of Alan's things, plus a suit, 2 pair of shoes and pants that didn't make it in the photo and ya esta...

Meet Elder Gabriel Taborda the Missionary, called to the Uruguay Mission!

Obviously, suit, pants, shirts are being altered for Gabriel!  May the missionary force be strong in Uruguay!! Good Luck Gabriel, you will be a great missionary!

Argentine Beef

Today as we were walking to our office we saw some guys dumping stuff out of large black bags into the back of a truck.  As we got closer this is what we found.

No truck liner, no refrigeration, no cover and I may never eat meat down here again!

Fruit Market

We have walked the streets of Rosario for almost 9 months and today we found a treasure that we have not seen before.  We walk this street every other day and just noticed this street fruit market.

In Rosario customers do not touch the produce, the shop owner picks out the fruit and bags it for you.  This gal was also wearing a plastic glove to touch the fruit!  She is my kind of gal! Below notice that to the side of Alan's head is a red cage with a beautiful little yellow canary bird, Tweety!!

Inside her little store was lettuce!!  You don't see much lettuce because they can't get it clean enough to eat. So, their salads consist of shredded carrots, tomatoes and hard boiled eggs.

When you do see lettuce it is all wilted and yucky.  I did notice that she had a frig. in her back area and so maybe that is why her greens looked great!  Her little market was so clean and organized! This will be our twice a week fruit stop from now on!!