Argentina Here We Come

Leaving our friends in the US was difficult, but fortunately since Terri and I had about 17 separate events which we said goodbyes at, I think we managed to see just about every friend, acquaintance, and well wisher before leaving. Thanks to all of our great friends for giving us such a great send off over the period of about 4 months.

Thanks to Jon Gilman for hooking Terri and I up with business class upgrades for our flight. Terri and I got to ride in style and were about as well rested as a person can be after a 10 ½ hour flight when we touched down in Buenos Aires. When we got off the plane and out of the terminal we were greeted by 80 degree weather and sunshine. After coming in from the Chicago winter, it felt like we were 19 years old on our first college Spring Break.

Driving into the city I noticed a few things. This country is futbol (soccer) crazy. Futbol was on 75 % of the billboards and we must have passed a dozen fields on the way into the city. I am excited to watch the World Cup in a country that is so excited over this game. We also noticed that the highway infrastructure seemed relatively good around the city. However, our comparison is Chicago, so that might not be saying much. I knew my office was next to a McDonalds and as we were driving in, every time I saw a McDonalds I would remark to Terri “Hey, I think that’s where my office is, maybe we’re close” and then we would go whizzing by. After the 5th or 6th time this happened, Terri proposed the theory to me that maybe there are multiple McDonalds in this city, which got me to pipe down. McDonalds seems to be like the Starbuck’s of Buenos Aires, with locations almost every 2 – 3 blocks.

The architecture of the city is interesting. It reminds me of European cities. It has lot of old buildings with gorgeous architecture. However, it seems that many of them stand empty, which is sad. Seems like many of them are too beautiful to tear down, yet it is often too expensive to renovate them into something useable. I’m not sure that is the case, but I suspect it is. In general, the city is very different from Chicago, yet there appear to be enough similarities to make for an easy transition. We are really excited and have been nothing but smiles as we look forward to our adventure.