Third Time's A Charm

Last night I was robbed. I was at a club here in Buenos Aires when my cell phone was stolen from me. That's right, this occurred only two days after the day in which two separate groups of people attempted to rob me two separate times.

Unfortunately, this was my US cell phone (not my cheap Argentina one). Just the day before, I had unlocked my US cell phone for use here in Argentina and transferred my Argentina SIM card to it. Just in time for it to be stolen. When I was talking to the family that I am staying with about this, they were very sympathetic but not the slightest bit surprised. One of the brothers, Ian, told me that he has had three cell phones stolen at clubs.

It is a different world here. I don't know what to make of it, and I don't know how much more of it I can take. I was taking every precaution I could, but honestly, you have to carry a cell phone with you. The part that is hardest for me to accept about all of this, is that it's entirely out of my control at a certain point. You can take every precaution in the book, but that doesn't mean you will emerge from a foreign country with all of your valuables intact. Hell, you can even get robbed three times in a three day period. I am living proof of that.

I figure that this is the low point of my stay here in Buenos Aires. I know it can get substantially worse than this, but I sure hope that it does not. It is very different living in a city like this with such narrow sidewalks that people often have to walk in the streets. The city simply is just not big enough for the population. Sometimes, you have to wait for three subte trains because they're so packed to the brim. When there are this many people in a place this small, people are bound to bump into each other and cause problems for one another. I just hope that my share of those problems are in the past now...