Touch down

Damn, long flight. No time to waste. Preliminary impressions of Buenos Aires: it's a lot like Madrid. It's flat, the streets are laid out in a grid with huge "avenidas". Everything seems to feed into the Plaza de Mayo. Lots of pharmacies and cell phone stores. Lots of cafes and kiosks. I settled down in a cafe to read the paper and came across an interesting article on how none of the elected officials up for office on June 28th have come forward to talk about abortion. The economy is the biggest issues, obviously. But it could be a good first article.

Most interesting/frightening moment so far: right as we left the plane, the flight attendants gave us hygienic masks. Yeah, they're freaked out about the "la gripe" (the swine flu). Some passengers kept the mask on, some didn't. Some of the gate security had them on, most didn't. I spoke briefly with the woman who sold me a cell phone. She asked where I was from, and then asked if I had the swine flu. Come on, ask me about Obama, or about how the US soccer team just slipped into the semifinals of the Confederations Cup. I'm going to try and take pictures of people on the street wearing the masks. Hopefully some pictures tonight, it'll get dark fast here.