Still Alive, Y'all

As I had expected, about as many things have happened to me in the past few days, as did in the rest of my entire summer. After flying for approximately three gazillion hours, I got to Buenos Aires, where my program thingy paid for a taxi to take me to my family. In the taxi, these things happened:

1. I tried to read the street number to the taxista but realized I had forgotten how to say “fifty.”
2. I feared for my life.
3. I feared for muchas pedestrians’ lives.
4. The taxista tried to introduce himself with the universal hand gesture of pointing at one’s chest but he had to repeat himself three (3) times.
5. I feared for my life.
6. The taxista gave like ten piropos to women passing by.¹
7. The taxista turned on the radio and started playing music to which he started swaying violently. (No exaggeration, the car started leaning side-to-side).
8. The taxista smoked like 5 cigarrillos that were called something terrifyingly similar to formaldehyde.
9. I feared for my life again.

There have been so many interactions similar to this with los argentinos that I’ll just let you generalize from here.


After the taxi ride, I met the woman I’ll be living with this semester. She lives in a neighborhood called Belgrano, which is middle to upper middle-class, which means it’s pretty safe, which means I’ll only maybe get mugged. Cristina, mi host mother, was the most nonchalant about the whole thing, I guess cause I’m her fourth student. This means she’s got the whole thang all set up for me, including INTERWEBS and una TELE² (that’s what the rest of the world calls TV) in my room. She’s real nice but it gets kind of awkward sometimes when I have nothing to say. Por ejemplo, this is what my first dinner was like:

1. I SCREWED UP MY FIRST BESITO GUYS³
2. We sat in silence.
3. I smiled awkwardly.
4. They talked about universidades.
5. I smiled awkwardly.

I’ve realized it’s going to take some adjustment because Argentines do things like talk for hours over tea/coffee after dinner, whereas I’m accustomed to talking never. It’s not that I’m timid, I’m just the worst at small talk. Whatevs.

Anywhoo, apart from these difficulties, I’m having a great time getting lost in the city. But for reals. Basically what happens everyday is we have breaks between classes⁴ where I wander around with personas from the program I’ve met (YEAH I’M TALKING ABOUT YOU, THE PERSON(S) I JUST FRIENDED ON FACEBOOK WHO MAYBE FOUND THEIR WAY HERE) and get lost and eat in a café or McCafe⁵. The cafés are kewl. The first día I ordered a fairly decent sandwich and a glass of wine (THAS RIGHT I’M LEGAL NOW, MOM AND DAD) for around the equivalent of 7 dollars. Also, they have not normal U.S. things at the cafes. Por ejemplo, while I was at McDonald’s today, at a regular café, this chico ordered what he thought was a sandwhich, and it was, except for the fact that the sandwhich was a bunch of raw meat between two crackers. Yeah. I think I’m required to eat that before I leave.

Anyways, I also bought my celular from a store called Personal. Now, it may be because I don’t understand Spanish completely⁶ but cell phones are the most complicated thing down here. What you do (I think) is buy a phone that has 5 minutes on it then go to a pharmacy/convenience store to buy real minutes. BUT WAIT because you probably can’t do that yet because you don’t have your number yet because it takes hours for Personal to text it to you. This is all really boring I’m sure, but basically, all this leads to why I’m sitting here writing this blog post instead of being at the bars with people.

Basically what ha’ happened was was that I used my 5 minutes trying to call a cab to pick me up,⁷ so when the cab never came, I was without a way to get out because I’mma be honest I’m sorta scared of taking a bus because I feel like I’ll end up in Brasil.

And that brings me to ahora. Next time, I hope to talk about using a cell phone correctly, going out to bars, and carrying on at least five minutes of conversation con argentinos.

¹ This is a thing where men rape women with their eyes and mouths when they walk down the skreet. My taxista had various techniques including beeping, shouting incomprehensible (to me) things, and whistling (yeah, you know the whistle).

² Argentine TV is the most fascinating thing. They have about five or six regular channels like in the US and then some, my family included, have additional cable packages. On the tele, you can watch: soap operas about people walking around the forest with guns, game shows that rival the Japanese in peculiarness, and a bunch of American shows like Friends, or The Office, etcetera, either with Spanish subtitles or dubbed in Spanish. My first night, I chose to watch COPS dubbed in Spanish because, well, why wouldn’t I do that?

³ En Argentina, when you greet someone, there’s this thing you do called a besito where what is supposed to pasar is you’re supposed to touch the other person’s cheek and make a kissing noise IN THE AIR. Here’s what happened with my first besito: I tried to shake her hand (BECAUSE IS GON BE WEIRD IF GO IN FOR THE KISS WHEN I WASN’T SUPPOSED) but she leaned in for the besito. What happened was a kind of hybrid hanbesishake where we interlocked our hands (like we were doing the half-shoulder-hug thing in ‘Merica) and shook them while she kissed the air next to my cheek and I panicked and accidently kissed her cheek. Let’s just say that say you should be sure to watch out for this mini catastrophe on the next episode of WHEN BESITOS GO WRONG.

⁴ They’re not classes.

⁵ Yeah I went to McDonald’s here so what. I was basically curioso about what they were like and ya know what? No big deal. WAY more expensive than at home and apart from the burger I ordered, WHICH WAS SUPPOSED TO COME WITH WHAT LOOKED LIKE DORITOS ON IT BUT DIDN’T, pretty much the same.

⁶ Yeah, that’s definitely what it is.

⁷ I’ve been told I have to always call a cab because if you take one from the street you will be robbed/raped/killed in 5 minutes flat.

I Leave in Two Days (Who’s Tryna See My Freak-out Face?)1

It’s taken a few days of living in my empty room to make me realize it, but I’m leaving incredibly soon. Like, so soon that I could look up the forecast and be fairly confident that weather.com knows what the eff they’re talking about.²

This is tremendously alarming to me for a number of reasons. Of course there’s the obvious “ah man, I’mma miss my friends so harrrd” and the duh-core “this city is gonna be huge and I’m not gonna understand anything people say to me.”

What I’m dreading the most is closer to the usual “Ah don wanna go back to school, I liked summer so much.” To explain the intensification of my back-to-school angst, I’ll paint you a picture (keep in mind that because I’m not an English major, I will be finger-painting instead of paintbrush-painting).

Guys, do you know what I’ve been doing this summer so far? Because it’s nothing. Aside from working at the El Harris Teeter³ for a couple months, I’ve had none legit responsibilities. I even peaced out of there like two weeks ago for no other reason than to “prepare for my pending journeys abroad” aka go to the store twice for some traveling supplies and paint my room (thanks a lot, Townhaus).

Now don’t get me wrong here, because I had fully intended on having a productive summer. I was going to start running everyday and get in shape. And you don’t even know how much I was planning on reading that one collection of Borges short stories in Spanish. But GUYS, they call it Chapel Hill for a reason: there are a lot of hills here (running). Also, after reading one of the aforementioned short stories and not picking up on much more than a general plot outline, I realized that, ya know what guys? That stuff’s all in SPANISH (reading Spanish short stories).

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that I've had a fairly lazy summer, and starting in two days, I’m anticipating a transition akin to the one that took place at my recent WEREWOLF BAR MITZVAH.⁴ I know everyone else has to go back to school soon but listen: shut up this is my blog about me and beef and it’s about me right now. Shifting from a life where the most strenuous thing my brain faces is keeping track of the plots of all the TV shows I watch on the Internet, to a life where the most difficult thing is getting adjusted to a whole new world⁵ all in SPANISH is something that I wouldn't mind putting off for a little longer.

Having finished complaining about all this really boring stuff, I want to say that my excitement for all of this far outweighs any of these apprehensions. Because (¡CLICHÉ ALERT!) going through all this stuff will be good for me and I wanna learn about stuff outside of Chapel Hill, and learn how to speak SPANISH, blah blah etc.

So if you’ve come this far through this post without getting annoyed with my complaints and footnotes, you’re probably bored and/or one of my parents. So I’ll just finish by letting you know that the next time I put something up here, I’ll almost definitely be in Buenos Aires, really tired of eating cows, and in my host-mother’s place because ¡I FOUND OUT SHE HAS INTERNETS YA’LL! (¡¡¡¡GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLL!!!!)

Also, in case you were wondering, I apparently wrote this blog post in a style reminiscent of the late great J. D. Salinger.

¹Sorry this blog post is about to read like a kvetch. I should also take this opportunity to apologize from using a David Foster Wallace-amount of footnotes, because I’m sure that’s annoying to read on the Internets.

² I refuse to look up the weather until I leave. The reason for this is because, due to certain astrophysiologies, the rotation and angles of the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars, whether or not Pitchfork has recently bestowed their Best New Music accolade to some deserving/undeserving artist*, the proliferation of heliocentricismization, SCIENCE SCIENCE TYLERMILLS SCIENCE, I know that it is winter in Buenos Aires and this fact only enhances my wanting-to-stay-in-chapel-hill-a-little-bit-longer-ness.

* Oh, so you thought P4k only controls the world of indie music? WRONG THEY CONTROL THE WORLD OF EARTH. In fact, Pitchfork’s recent allocation of a lowly 4.4 to M.I.A.’s most recent album, /\/\/\Y/\ (yeah, I know), caused 4.4 days blizzard in some parts of southern Argentina, and even Chile. IT’S TRUE LOOK IT UP.†

† HAHAHA LOOK AT YOU! I MADE YOU READ THE FOOTNOTE OF A FOOTNOTE OF A FOOTNOTE!

³ Thanks to Emily, I’m already calling it by it’s Spanish name. This way, when I work at the El Harris Teeter in Argentina (as I inevitably will because if you know anything about me, destiny thinks it is my raison d’être or some French shit like that) I won’t look like a complete ass by not knowing it by its proper name.

⁴ TRANSITION FACT: Boys becoming men and men becoming wolves is the most intense transition imaginable.

⁵ …A new fantastic point of view / no one to tell us no or where to go / or say we’re only dreaming (YOU’RE WELCOME)