I dont heart sweat.

Whenever I go to a new country, I have to relearn how to use the keyboard because the local keys have accents that we dont use in place of the ones we are used to. For example, in place of the apostrophe key I get an open bracket. So expect a ton of weird punctuation marks buried within my future posts and e-mails.
Onto today. I gotta say, sometimes not speaking the local language works out in the positive. This afternoon I walked down Calle Florida, a very long pedestrian street of shops and restaurants in the center of town, and looked for sunglasses because I forgot mine at home. I went into a store and tried a few on. As expected, because I have slippy fingers, I dropped a pair. One of the lenses popped out and the sales clerk ran over and yanked it from me. Five minutes later, I get a tap on my shoulder. He proceeds to tell me something that I dont understand. He uses gestures, points to the glasses, points to the lens that now looks like a sad, unattached appendage and keeps talking. No entiendo, lo siento. Finally after about 5 minutes I figure out hes telling me I have to buy the glasses because I broke them. Even for $5, which was what they were selling for, I was not going to put out. I tried to explain to him that the glasses were defective anyway, why would a good pair of glasses have lenses that pop out if you just dropped them once? This did not go over well. He had no idea what I was saying. After another 5 minutes of bewilderment, he gave up and put the glasses away. I bought another pair of glasses from the store and offered 20 pesos instead of the selling price of 15, but they declined. So was I in the wrong? Probably. Stupido Americano, Im sure they said.
Buenos Aires is something like this so far: Take a bunch of the most diverse-looking people, drop them into one city and turn on the heat. The women are gorgeous, the men are similarly good-looking. The city reminds me a little of Barcelona and Rome put together, because of the particular mix of old and new. Today I walked through the tango heart of BA, San Telmo, and had a great US$4 meal that included chicken with rice and a drink. Im about to head to dinner now and expect to find a whole set meal for under US$6. I also did a few touristy things that are far too common to write about and moreover uneventful, so Ill save you from boring tourist reports.
I am finally cooling down. It was something like 30 degrees Celsius at noon with lots of humidity. I cant figure out why Im always the only one who looks like I stuck my face in my sweaty armpit while everyone else is instead simply radiating from the heat. If my clothes didnt already give it away that Im a tourist, the amount of sweat coming from my pores is enough. And the mosquito bites. I got bit about 8 times yesterday night. So Im starting the garlic pill regimen tonight and will let you know if it works.
I cant believe Im here for five months. My initial trepidation is melting away and the more I talk to fellow travelers about their journeys so far, the more excited I am getting. All of the travelers Ive met so far are solo. Its comforting to know that so many people are traveling independently.