Barrio chino

I live 2 blocks from BsAs's Chinatown. I walk through part of it twice a week going to and from Di Tella, but I haven't spent very much time actually looking around. I went on a little walk there today because I needed a break from homework.

Something about it was just a little too funny. It was as though I was in any Chinatown in the US. This feeling really should not have been too surprising since Chinatowns are more about China than the country they are in. I did find a source of skippy peanut butter, top roman, and hot sauce. I may have said this before, but the only spice used here is salt. Maybe some Italian seasoning is thrown in occasionally, but that's about it.

I bought some hot sauce in an oriental store. My decision about which hot sauce to buy was made solely on which I could buy and get the most monedas in change. One was $7.80 and the other was $11. If I got the $7.80 one, I would have payed with a ten and gotten a $2 in cash back and $0.20 back in monedas (coins). I ended up getting the $11 peso one, giving the cashier a 10 and a 2 peso bill. She promptly asked me if I had a one peso moneda (so that she could give me $2 in cash back, and save the precious coin in the register). I keep my monedas in a coin purse, but I pretended to fumble around in my wallet looking for a one peso moneda. In the end I scored a one moneda peso in return. I did the same thing later with $3.25 cookies, giving the cashier a $5 bill. I pretty much maximized my moneda acquisition with that one.

I will be spending the semester lying about whether or not I have coins. Perhaps this whole thing should have been prefaced with the fact that monedas are the only was to ride the bus here. I realized last night that I had less than 2 pesos in monedas and that's only enough for one bus ride.