Presidential Elections, a new friend and a new student!

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This last weekend was a good one for us. On Saturday, we had tea with a high school friend of my great aunt Nora. Nora lived here when she was in high school and maintained several friendships with people from here. We met Ana at her house and stayed for quite awhile. We were having such a good time chatting, hearing about Argentina, her life and discussing politics, money and more. We are planning on getting together again soon.

Yesterday was the presidential elections here. We have been watching ads, seeing posters and hearing opinions about the different candidates since we arrived. We wandered around town yesterday and even slipped into a school where the voting was happening. It is required by law to vote here, so they have a very high turn out and need almost all the schools to run the polls. At 6:00, the booths closed and the counts began to come out. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the incumbant, was reelected. She gained 53% of the votes. The second place was a man named Hermes Binner. He got 16% of the votes. Cristina was the first female president, and then yesterday, was the first female to be reelected. Regardless of opinions about her policies, everyone seems to agree that she is a strong, powerful and very intelligent woman.

Today, we bussed ourselves out to Belgrano, about an hour from our house. I had an appointment to meet with a potential student. He and I chatted for awhile and agreed to start classes this week. Yeah! We also agreed on meeting at a place closer to where I am to make the commute not so long.

I'm attaching some more pictures so you can see more of what it looks like down here.

Love you!

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Photos

Halloween!
It's not really celebrated here, more of a commercial holiday.

Crazy keys
This is what the house keys look like, really!

Squatter prevention
Squatters rights are very strong here, so people brick up buildings if they will be gone for awhile because once a group moves in, it is almost impossible to kick them out!

Our room
This was our first room, which was very small. The room we have now is so small that Daniel can touch three walls at the same time!

The bidet. .
A necessity in any Argentine bathroom. It takes a bit of getting used to. . .

My first day of work
Daniel insisted on a "first day of work" picture.

Scary movie!
We watched a scary Argentine movie one night, and I was scared :)

La Fuerza de la Educacion
Cristina, the presidenta, bought laptops for all high school students.

Campaigning
This car pumped out announcements for its candidate. We saw another with huge megaphones on top of a tiny car.

Campaign posters
The posters are up everywhere, even on phone booths where it says not to post anything.

More Cristina
She calls her movement the "Evita Movement" after Eva Peron.

Third place
Alfonsin came in third in the race yesterday.

Voting
Here is the picture Daniel snuck when we slipped inside one of the voting areas.

Ana!
Here we are with our new friend Ana!