An explanatory note:
I saw this list for the first time while serving as a missionary in the Argentina Buenos Aires South Mission. It was started some time ago by a mission secretary and added to from time to time. Not long after my first exposure to it, I suddenly became aware of all the differences between my surroundings and what I was accustomed to at home. In fact, in a single day, I jotted down over 50 things that were "different" on the back of my daily planner! Less than a month later, I was transferred to the mission offices to become the new mission secretary (and computer nerd). During the course of my 6 months in the offices, I added my own observations to the list, as well as many other items that fellow missionaries suggested. What follows is an edited and reorganized version of the list as of July 1998, when I left the mission.

Please note that this list is not intended to be derogatory in any way towards the people or culture of Argentina. It simply presents, in a lighthearted manner, some of the things which seem unusual or unique to American eyes. In addition, this list is not intended to represent Argentina in general; some of the items are very specific to the people and places of the Buenos Aires South Mission.

And now, by popular request...

[Customs] [Construction] [Food and Drink] [Health] [Indoors]
[Out and About] [Phones and Electricity] [Shopping] [Transportation]

• Uniforms for public schools (guardapolvos)
• Clapping hands instead of knocking
• Shaking forearms, shaking elbows
• Keeping plastic on picture frames, remote controls, chairs, car seats
• Siesta - 4 hours after lunch when the world closes
• People saying "ch ch ch" to get your attention
• Saying "viste" after every sentence...¿viste?
• Kissing everyone in the room to say "hello" or "goodbye"
• Feriados (holidays) every other Monday
• Everyone named "che"
• Carnival - soak your friends
• Putting jugs on top of cars, horses, etc. to show that they are for sale
• Fireworks on Christmas Eve
• Asking permission before praying
• Limited list of possible baby names
• "Sientensen, callensen, discupenmen, hagansenlon"
• "I've lived here for 30 years - and I've never met my neighbors!"
• Kid's Day! (Día de los Niños)
• Cumbia
• The whole family sleeps in the same room
• Hens for mascots (soccer teams, police department)
• Jeans and funky pastel 70's colors in church
• Sit outside and watch TV inside
• Everyone is a handyman
• "Don't replace the window - tape it!"
• Breast-feed your baby in public - at any time!
• Breast-feed your toddler (2-5 years) when he/she asks for it
• Playing the radio loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear it
• "Juntados para siempre"

• Little "peek" doors in the middle of a big door
• Water tanks on top of each house
• Houses with names
• Front doors to open-air corridors
• "No peeping" covers on keyholes
• "No peeping" covers on keyholes on gates!
• "Lick-'n'-stick" bricks
• Argentine architecture: Wood? What's wood?
• Bars on windows, doors, peep-holes, etc.
• Every house with 6 foot high fences lined with barbed wire and glass
• Putting spikes on large outdoor window sills, short walls, and monuments/plaques so that no one can sit down
• Privately-owned sidewalks that change every 10 yards
• Tiled garage floors
• Plastic/rubber coated tin roofs
• Door knockers that can't actually knock
• One word: chapa
• Pozo ciego - 9 meter hole in the ground for bathroom waste
• Wooden or plastic blinds outside the window
• Plastic strips instead of a screen door
• One-room cement house with stereo and color TV with remote
• Every person is still building their house, adding on to it, or building around it, and they never stop

• Milk in a plastic bag
• Facturas
• Chipa
• Eat the whole cow (tongue, udder, stomach, intestine, eyeballs)
• Liquid yogurt - to drink
• Alfajores, empanadas, dulce de leche, mate, ñoquis [mmmmm...]
• Eucalyptus used as candy, not medicine
• Halls throat lozenges = candy?!?
• Putting a pool of oil on mashed potatoes instead of gravy
• Peach Tang, Pineapple Tang, Strawberry Tang, Watermelon Tang, and mixes of all of them
• "Mate" for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and as midday and late-night snack
• Mayonnaise with lemon juice
• Pickles = pickled carrots, cauliflower, celery, etc.
• Unpitted green olives on pizzas
• Tomato jelly
• Shortening in bricks, not in cans
• Salad dressing = lemon juice, oil, salt
• Garlic in braids
• Meat and cheese not refrigerated
• Suin - carcinogenic juice
• 2 liters of water with one teaspoon of Suin

• Liver attacks, baja presión
• Women getting hysterical if you drink milk after eating watermelon
• Buying prescription drugs without a prescription
• Stick a flaming cone of newspaper in your ear to cure an earache
• Sulfur takes the air out of sore muscles and bruises
• Lemon cures anything

• Shower in a box (calefón)
• Squeegee the floor after showering
• Thongs in the shower
• Propane torch pointed at the shower pipe for water heating
• Pillow cases with two open ends
• No air conditioning - just fans and heaters
• Sinks and showers drain directly into the street
• Using Raid in place of Lysol to freshen the air
• Washing clothes by hand
• Using clotheslines in winter - clothes spinners instead of dryers
• Winter time: huddle around the stove with the door open
• Skeleton keys

• Sidewalk cleaning every day
• Central park (plaza) in every city with a cathedral
• Publicity cars with huge speakers on top (auto parlante)
• Street watering machines
• Tile sidewalks
• Mud ovens
• Trash baskets on a stick
• Broken glass on top of walls
• Women sweeping dirt every day
• The smell of summer: espirales burning for mosquitoes, burning garbage
• Sidewalk polishing
• The "zanja" (ditch) sewer system
• The zanja cleaning system: a can on a stick
• Villas (slums)
• Sweeping up leaves and lawn clippings with a broom (rakes don't exist)
• Cutting the grass with a machete
• Cutting the lawn with a weed-eater
• Glass, cardboard, tin collectors (botelleros)
• Street names the same in every city
• Ceramic tiles for floors, walls (interior and exterior), shingles, porches
• Airplanes with speakers for advertising
• "Graffiti" political campaigning
• Wooden playground slides
• People welding in the street
• Littering is not a crime - in fact, it's encouraged!
• Dump trucks full of guts ("meat wagons")
• Every empty lot converted into a soccer field
• Houses, then utilities, roads, etc.
• Soap on a stick in public bathrooms
• More lingerie shops than gas stations
• More remiserías (taxi agencies) than lingerie shops
• More lottery ticket outlets than remiserías
• ATM-in-a-room
• No fire hydrants
• No public trash cans
• When there's grass in parks, etc., you're not allowed to walk on it
• Standing in lines half a block long to pay your bills
• Bank tellers who abhor making change
• Moon and constellations upside-down
• Gorgeous sunsets every evening

• 220 volts
• Streetlights: light bulb hung over street with one wire
• One 40-watt light bulb to light an entire house
• One electric line with 30 other lines laying over it "enganchado"
• Concrete electric and telephone poles
• No electric stoves or ovens
• Privately-owned streetlights
• Telephone tokens (fichas)
• Per-minute charges on local calls
• Cellular phones cheaper than traditional ones
• Multilingual public phones
• Locutorios - indoor pay phones
• 4-, 5-, 6-, 7-digit phone numbers
• Ground wire? What's a ground wire?

• Trees that are impossible to climb because of the thorns
• Palo borracho trees
• Cutting off the limbs of the trees every year...
• ...and filling the ruts in the roads with the limbs
• More dogs than people (10 to 1)
• Dogs on the roof
• Dogs without hair due to mange ("sarna elephants")
• Horses, cows, geese, chickens loose in the street
• Puppies being made in public
• Dogs eating dirty diapers
• Six-inch flying cockroaches
• La chicharra: the loudest little bug in the world!

• Every house a convenience store (kiosco)
• Buying shampoo in bulk
• Coke in a glass bottle or refillable plastic bottle
• Wine and beer cheaper than water
• Pig heads in the butcher shop
• All items gift wrapped at pharmacy or bookstore
• Candy, aspirin, stamps used as currency substitutes
• 21% sales tax already figured in
• $1.00 Coke cans
• Rip-off pro sports logos with the wrong colors
• Misspelled, strangely-written English T-shirts
• Millions of items with unauthorized Disney, Garfield, etc., pictures
• NASA = clothing, not space shuttles
• Meal Deal = $5, not $3
• "Bimbo" bread and "Happy Family" toilet paper
• Half dozen eggs wrapped in newspaper
• Every car stereo is more expensive than the car
• 30-year payment plan for your new 20-inch TV
• Rubber overshoes don't exist
• Stores that never have change for anything bigger than a five-peso bill
• Street vendors (bread, newspaper, Tupperware, underwear, etc.)
• No receipts unless you ask
• Fruit sold from the crate...
• ...and they choose it, not you!
• Batteries sold individually
• Store overhangs at forehead level (ouch!)
• Playboy next to kids' magazines
• Newstand guy yelling with a weird nasal voice: "¡Diari-oo!"
• Bring-your-own-shopping-cart
• Mailing a letter and putting so many stamps on it that they weigh it again and charge extra
• Buy anything (underwear, razors, tools, candy) - and get a good deal - on the train or bus
• Selling homemade bread in the streets
• Door-to-door toilet paper salesmen
• Door-to-door fish salesmen
• Door-to-door egg salesmen
• Door-to-door vegetable salesmen
• Door-to-door ANYTHING salesmen

• Whole family on a bike
• Whole family on a moped
• No right on red, no left on stoplights
• Driving without headlights at night to save the car battery
• Peugots, Renaults, Fiats, new Ford Falcons
• Majority of cars are "classic" models
• Ghostbuster ambulances
• Honking your horn instead of stop signs
• Cars left in neutral and parallel parked bumper to bumper - create your own spot to park!
• The tuna can on wheels - Citröen!
• Four-hundred-year-old colectivos (buses)
• Diesel and electric trains
• Colectivos (and diesels) decorated like Christmas trees
• Stick your arm out to stop the bus
• Packing 150 people on the bus
• Hanging on the outside of a bus
• Jumping off a moving bus because it won't come to a full stop to let you off
• Donkey carts on highways
• Eight lanes of traffic on a five-lane street
• Customized buses (colectivos) with mirrors, dolls, hangings, stickers, etc.
• Nafta = gas, gas = natural gas
• Trucks/cars/cycles dragging steel re-bar down the street
• No lines down the middle of the road
• Muddy streets flooded for 3 weeks after the last rain storm
• Dirt roads in urban areas
• Cobblestone streets and bridges
• Mountain bikes with only 1 gear
• Car mufflers optional