Hello Everyone!
Well this has been an interesting week. It has felt really
slow and it seemed like we weren't teaching a whole lot but in the end we ended
up getting 15 lessons in anyway, which isn't too bad for the cold that we've
been having. There were some very interesting people that we taught though, so
I guess my stories will focus on them.
First of all, we have taught a man named Julio a couple of
times - he lives in a nice apartment but in a fairly humble community because
he travels a lot. He works in big business and helps companies make huge
business decisions internationally. As such, whenever we meet with him he likes
to talk a lot about business and about his work, but this last time he was
talking about the Argentine peso to US Dollar conversion rate and how it makes
more sense to have money here in Argentina kept as Dollars with the inflation,
etc. etc. He then goes on to tell us about someone he knows (we'll say a
friend) that had his hands in some pretty sketchy mafia type stuff that found
himself with authentic paper from the USA to print dollars, authentic ink, an
authentic plate to print the front, but one from Argentina to print the back.
With all that, he proceeded to print $800 million of fake $100 bills that took
forever for the goverment to realize because everyone only ever checks the
front and never the back with the testing pen. When they did find out though,
they had to treat them as good because they were already all over the world in
circulation, which is supposedly part of the reason why they are printing new
$100 bills - to get rid of all the fakes. Well the guy ended up imprisoned but
wouldn't say anything about how he got his hands on the materials so the
governement (according to Julio, he called this guy to ask him and he said he
had nothing to do with it) went to his house and killed his girlfriend, framing
him so that he would have to stay in prison longer and they could maybe get the
information out of him with more time. So, that was a pretty interesting story
to hear. Also, Julio said that everything he owns is put in his daughter's name
so that if anything like that ever happens to him, there is nothing the
goverment can confiscate from him. You don't need to worry about us passing by
though, he's not a criminal in and of himself, he is just a bit conspirical and
knows people like that because of his position in big business.
Also, if you remember a few weeks ago when we visited the
super wealthy doctors that gave me and my companion each a little bit of
meteorite, we were finally able to pass by again yesterday and it was super
awesome. They also told us a number of stories:
First of all, it turns out that the man (Mario Paganini) was
the personal family doctor of Isabel Peron, member of THE presidential family
about 40 years ago, and so also personally knew that family. Well back in the
day here in Argentina there were thousands of disappearances of people, and
turns out that he and his wife were abducted as well. Mario was treating a
patient and was looking into his history to figure out how to try and help him
when somebody caught wind of it and decided that he was looking for something
else that somebody didn't want found out, so they took him and his wife (also a
doctor) to El Poso de Bomfield, where they were going to assasinate a lot of
other people that were abducted. For whatever reason though, they let his wife
go (they were brought there separately), though she had nothing but her night
clothes on, with no money or anything. She crawled around and under cars though
to escape, made it to a main highway and caught a bus back to a bigger town and
then from there got a Taxi back to the royal family, assuring them that they
would be paid well. When she got back she informed them of what happened and
they sent the cheif of police to go look for Mario, and they said they had no
clue who he was. They then informed them that they had 30 minutes to find him
or they would be put to death, and he magically appeared, and so in that way he
was saved as well. (I have no clue what happened to the rest of the people that
must have been there.
On another occasion too though, he was waiting at the
airport here in Ezeiza to recieve Isabel Peron and there were huge huge crowds
of people as well, from a bunch of different countries - seemingly there to see
her like any other political arrival. What ended up happening though is that
there were different political factions there that ended up (trying to kill
her? not exactly sure here) but there was a lot of gunfire from both sides and
thousands of people died that day. He said he was able to escape but realized
on getting back to the hotel where they were staying that his friend was still
there so he grabbed a pair of car keys and asked who would go back with him,
drove back and found him, then made it back to the hotel. He said people were
dropping dead like flies there though. The name of the even was the Massacre de
Ezeiza (Ezeiza Massacre in English) if you want to look it up, and he said that
it happened in the 1970s (1972 I think).
Also, it is super popular here to have a song play when
someone calls you so they can listen to that instead of just the ring until you
pick up, and so every time that we call them we get to here the song they put,
which is "Titanium". It gets me every time.
Other than that though, not too much new this week. My comp
and I ate some bad sandwiches that left us pretty sick for a day and without an
appetite for another, but we should be all good now. :)
As far as the photos I am throwing on, the one is of an
"Apple" Lighter that I found. Like I said, people like to put english
on a lot of things here to make them seem nicer (especially T-Shirts, which is
really fun) but rarely ever does it make sense, and it can lead to some pretty
funny sayings. Also, there is pretty much no such thing as patent or copywright
infringement here so there is A LOT of fake stuff. The lighter was a combo of
the two, so I figured that you all might enjoy a look too.
Also, with my comp's $10 for this last week we bought a
bunch of Alfajores, a very common treat here, of a bunch of different flavors.
We were going to eat them when we bought them but that just so happened to be
the day we started feeling sick, so we are going to enjoy them today. :)
Anywho, that really is all now, so hope you all have a good
week!
Love,
Elder McCollum
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