el grupo

day 10.
today we meet the group that we´re spending the next 3 weeks with on our tour from buenos aires to lima, via chile and bolivia. we´re not sure how we feel about this, but hopefully they will be nice. i am sharing a room with one of them tonight in hotel splendido (it´s not)...
today i have done boring things like change traveller´s cheques (takes longer than you think, when there´s seemingly only one place to do this in the whole city), buy some english books (again a bit of a mission, but i managed to get truman capote, f scott fitzgerald, and garcia marquez), posted a parcel (not telling who it´s to), and sorted out my bank account issues. we also dropped off our washing at the laundrette. getting that back will be the highlight of the day i think. suitably it has been raining all afternoon too. abi and laura have gone to see the ricoleta cemetry, where eva peron is buried and other famous argentinians.
i learnt who carlos gardel is, and then bought a postcard of him. he is argentina´s most famous tango singer, and he´s always smiling. not anymore as he died in 1935 in a plane crash. nobody knows where exactly he is from, could even be france, but he always said he was born in buenos aires at the age of 2 and a half.
i also bought a little radio so we can listen to local radio and try to understand it. this will hopefully annoy el grupo.
i learnt the words for a notebook (un block), what time do you close (que hora cierra), and a straw (pepita i think). argentinians are really friendly once you try to speak their language and tell them how much you like it here. perhaps they don´t get so many english people in winter (yes, it is winter here - southern hemisphere), as we seem to be a bit of a novelty for them.
we also bought some scissors to cut laura´s hair with. she is still feeling ill, but we are hoping it´s nothing serious.
tonight we go with el grupo for dinner, a tango lesson, and a tango show. hopefully not featuring us.

today´s questions are
who invented velcro and zips?
can all animals be rabies carriers, or just dogs, cats and monkeys?
what were the 2 types of transformers, deceptacons and something else?

some people have been asking is there a prize for answering the questions correctly - we hadn´t planned on having one, but i think the prize could be you get a special mention on our blog, and therefore the glory that goes with that. so send in your answers please!
ciao