Still Walking

Shaun and I have been spending our days walking around the city. Every day we pick a new destination, but we rarely make it there. Mostly because the streets are so narrow and if you don´t just put your head down and walk fast, people pretty much trample you over. I kind of feel like we are playing frogger on high speed, so both of us get overwhelmed pretty fast. It is also difficult to comminicate with eachother on our walks since we are moving so fast and walking single file with the dogs, so there isn´t even time to look at anything and definitely not any time to stop on the sidewalk to take pictures. By the time we get back to the house, we don´t want to do anything else and are kind of pissed off at eachother since our communication on our walk was shit.
But I think we are starting to get it figured out. Everything here runs about 3 hours later than things in the States. Shops open later, the streets are very busy earlier in the day and slow down a lot a little bit later when everything closes mid day. The shops then stay open later, people go out later, and the bars don´t get busy until about 3. So we have learned to stay up late, take the dogs for a walk around midnight, then sleep in late. We let the dogs out for just a minute when we get up around 10 or 11, then wait until about 2 to go for a long walk all around town. It seems to be working out alot better.
We have started the process of buying a car... a little bit. There are so many steps to take, and with no phone books or directories, it is difficult to find the places we need. Also, the cell phone we have at our apartment doesn´t work, so we have to walk down the block to make any calls. We have found a couple cars that are within our budget, a smallish van, similar to a volkswagen, and some that are similar to land cruisers. The first step is to find the police station for our barrio, neighborhood, and ask them for a certificado de domicilio. We fill out the paper and return it to them. They then come to our house to make sure we live there, sign the paper and give it back to us. They come to your house within 24-48 hours, so after we fill out the paper work, this could take up to 3 days. From there, we need to take that paper work to the AFIP office. Neither one of us is sure what that is. Or where to find it... From there, they process our paper and assign us a CDI, kind of a temporary social security number to prove we live here. According to everything we have read and heard, government offices here don´t really give a shit, so getting that number could take a long time. Or it could not. Who knows. I think once we find their office, we can go there daily and harrass them until we get what we want. And then... After all that, we can buy a car. Fun stuff.
Meanwhile, I have finally contacted some people through Couch Surfing, and found someone to help us speak Spanish better. Also, a group that meets weekly at a bar to speak foreign languages. Whew. Finally there is hope for us.

I think Shaun and I both agree, there are some cool things in the city (that we haven´t found yet) and it is very easy to get whatever you want, and fast, but we are ready to get out of here. Send us to the country where we have to make a living for ourselves instead of buy it the next block over. That´s just fine with us.