Let Me Digress For A Moment

I just checked to see if there were any comments to any of my posts and, lo and behold, there were some and I found each of them interesting and helpful. After reading and responding to them I thought I would take a minute to maybe clarify a couple things. I am new to this so my thoughts are not always well organized and I am NOT a professional blogger --- obviously.

OK, I do have permanent residency here and my DNI is the one with the pink pages for extranjeros and not the one with green pages for citizens. And yes, I was very fortunate to have good friends and a great lawyer help get me through the maze in quick order.

I am not here to do business. I am retired and, I think, that gives me maybe a different perspective than the writer from BA, who I am guessing came here to work. (BTW, if "Anonymous" reads this please let me know how to contact you because I really did enjoy your comments.).

When I decided to retire I gave myself 3 choices: Mexico, Italy or Argentina. My ex and I always loved Puerto Vallarta Mexico. It is wonderful, mountains and seashore in the same place. In Mexico, however, I would ALWAYS be a gringo, my racial characteristics would set me apart. Italy, especially Northern Italy, is, perhaps, the most beautiful place on earth. Milan, the lakes, the mountains, etc. BUT the Euro made it impossible to live there. Argentina was always one of my favorite places and no one would take me for a foreigner there until I opened my mouth. In addition, outside BA, there are relatively few Americans. I didn't want to move to meet other Americans in a foreign locale.

While all the corruption, poverty, whacky drivers, etc. do bother me they are not show stoppers that would cause me to leave. I can stand in line at the bank for an hour or at the "Express" line in the supermarket for 20 minutes and it doesn't matter that much. Some of the "irritants" I write about are to "warn" others before they come here so they might have an idea as to what to expect.

While structurally the US is probably the best place to live in the world, you pay a price for it. I found, and I am only speaking for myself, that there was really precious little time to enjoy things. I got up at 5AM each day and came home around 5 or 6 in the evening and to do what? I was always tired so maybe I watched a little TV and went to bed at 10, never really doing anything outside the house (except to walk the dogs). It seems to me that we lived in silos and it wasn't until I traveled for work and got to meet other people in other countries that I changed my mind about the "best" way to live ... and, as it turned out, a slower paced society, with all it's problems, was better for me, BUT I am only speaking for me.