In the clutches of a coin shortage

So, besides working as a programs coordinator at a Spanish school, I'm also working for Glimpse, an online magazine for young people living abroad. I'm blogging for them, so I'll be posting some bits and pieces about life in Buenos Aires on Glimpse.org.

If you are interested in the latest on the coin shortage here, head over to the blog:

No hay monedas -- Buenos Aires in the clutches of a coin shortage.

Erk, I still haven't changed my flight . . . procrastination is eating away at me.

Workin' it

So I have to admit that I've been holding out on you all, and now I'm ready to spill --- on Thursday, I went for an interview for a new job, on Friday I had training, and now I'm officially the full time Student Coordinator at a Spanish language school in BA.  I'm so excited about this that it warrants capital letters, and I'm one to use my capitals sparingly. 

Since my new job is full time, I had to leave my English students behind. This was somewhat sad, since I tend to get easily attached, especially to people intimately interested in English grammar (it sounds like I'm joking but I'm not). I have this image in my mind of my students aimlessly wandering the brightly lit halls of Microsoft -- that's where I was teaching  -- downtrodden, frustrated and completely unable to communicate with their coworkers beca

use I up and left them.

However, my new position allows me to speak Spanish all the time with my new bosses, Florencia and Juan, who are ever forgiving about the seemingly endless number of ways I manage to creatively butcher their language. It also means I get to move up about two rungs on the foodchain of expats in BA, and not worry -- so much -- about having enough money to do extravagant things such as laundry and eating. Haha, just kidding. Sort of.

In other news, the moneda shortage (recall, those are the ever elusive coins here in BA) seems to have reached new heights, although my friend Susanna insists it's no worse than when she studied here two years ago. My friends and I were delighted yesterday to discover that our subway rides were free -- we chalked it up to the holiday weekend and sped through the ticket turnstiles like kids at Disneyland. However, today Clarin  reports that the moneda shortage is the culprit behind a weekend of free subway rides. Because dozens of stops were completely out of monedas, the ticket sellers had no change to give customers looking to buy subway passes, and the stations were therefore forced to let passengers ride for free.

Ahh, the joys of inefficiency!

Also a shout out to all of you who say you have been reading my blog! Dan and Eric, where are all the snarky comments??