Another country, another trip to the dentist

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Geo: -31.4053, -64.1804

The first trajedy of our trip struck the day before we left Buenos Aires for Cordoba. A filling popped out of my front tooth and left a big gaping hole.

Karen said, I guess we'll have to go to a dentist. When we got to Cordoba we met our spanish teacher, Osvaldo Carnero and along with many other helpful things he did for us, he said he would ocntact his dentist and arrange for me to get my tooth fixed.

He emailed us later that day and said he had made me an apt for 6:00 the next evening, right after our class ended. He drove us to the dentist and insisted he stay with us as a translator so he could tell me what the dentist said.

This was a wonderful, generous thing that he was willing to do. So he drove us to the dentist's office. We rang the doorbell and the dentist, a woman, came to the door and invited us in. I immediately went to the chair in the dentist's office and Osvaldo sat alongside. Karen was left in the waiting room, but she could hear everything that was being said.

The dentist opened a drawer that looked like the top of my toolbox---instruments scattered throughout the drawer, but she selected what she needed and went to work on me.

10 minutes later she was done.

I was shocked. I had never been in a dentist's office for less than an hour. She presented me with a mirror and the job looked perfect.

Of course then there was the big matter of the payment. When I asked her how much it was, she said $100 pesos, please.

Translated into US dollars is 20 bucks. Did anyone ever go to a dentist and pay a $20 bill for the service? Not in my lifetime.

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