I feel pretty miserable here. I'm a US citizen living in Lanus. Not a nice place, actually, it's down-right disgusting! They told me that Lnaus is the east side of Buenos Aires, the slums. The streets are always full of dirty, rotten water, dog and cat shit, stray cats and dogs, fleas, cockroaches, mosquitoes, rotten garbage (because of the dogs getting into it, and the poor sanitation services), and old, decrepit houses build on top of one another so my bedroom window is literally facing my neighbor's front door, so every time they come in or out they can look right into my bedroom. Oh, and for the first time in my life I've seen rats near the place I'm living. They're actually in my house, too, and I began to see them dead randomly in different places, like a few times on my roof, and once in the street. I didn't even mention the horrible noise and air pollution, the danger, even of just going around the corner to the store, and the fact that everyone here seems to be a drunk, a drug addict, and a heavy smoker (of tobacco). I'd say it's pretty miserable here, at least for expats from the US, which has much higher living standards, even in slummy areas. It's also impossible for me, being considered illegal here, to find work, and i cannot get a bank account or buy a vehicle (also because I don't have 120,000 pesos to do so). I almost forgot to mention how ridiculously expensive it is here. A kilo of meat can cost up to 200 pesos, and if I need deodorant it can cost me up to 80 pesos, for one bar. Expensive, considering the average person here makes around less than 6,000 pesos per month, that's around 1500-1800 per week, not including what they take out for taxes. I definitely experienced culture-shock in the first 8-10 months that I was here.
I will say one thing though, I did find that the people here, for the most part, are much nicer, sociable, and I've had complete strangers open their homes to me. The people here seem to be happy anyway, I think it's just because I wasn't born and raised here, so I notice the bad and disturbing things, but for everyone else it's all normal.
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