4/27/16
Six weeks in: You know you're starting to adjust to Argentine life when... (arranged thematically)
FOOD
->You have a really early dinner at 8 pm, and feel weird about
it. (Note: when I’m just preparing food for myself in the kitchen, I usually
eat dinner around 11.)
->Your favorite part of the day is sitting down with a spoon
and your tub of dulce de leche.
[Corollary: You correctly figured out, and later had this
corroborated by Argentines, that Vacalín is the best dulce de leche brand,
hands-down.]
->Even though there are a couple of things you want at
Carrefour that you can only get there, you actually remember this time that if
you go in, you’ll be waiting in line for at least twenty minutes. Come on. It’s
just not worth it…
MONEY
->You strategically claim to have no change in certain
situations where you can get away with it (e.g., Carrefour; with obnoxious BA taxis
[yeah, they complain loudly, but I really couldn’t care less], etc.) so that you can
both get back more change and also hoard it up for when it is absolutely necessary
(paying at fruit & vegetable stands; having small bills for tips in
restaurants/bars; splitting the bill when out with friends).
->You have learned what the deal with
“monedas” is. Monedas are coins, and while there are 1- and 2-peso coins, I’m
talking about the coins worth less than a peso. 50-cent peso pieces are rare,
and 25-cent pieces even more so (you can count on the fruit & vegetable stands to usually have them, but no one else); but there are 10- and 5-cent
denominations as well. (If 1-cent pieces exist, I haven’t seen them.) I only know this because once I got back one of each of these tiny coins as change. I showed them to my friends later and they were amazed: "I didn't know those still existed!"
Story time: My second day in La Plata, and my fifth day in the country, I went to a supermarket for some groceries. I paid, and the cashier gave me back a 1-peso coin as change. There's no extra, hidden sales tax; the cashier was simply not giving me seven cents back. "Um, what about the seven cents?" I asked her. She gave me such a priceless, world-weary, 'are you serious' look that I think it'll always be seared into my brain. "Seven cents," she said, shaking her head, "it's just nothing." I shrugged and left the store, unwilling to argue. Did she really not give me the proper change just because she found seven cents to be so paltry? Every cent matters to me! (And then, of course, I later came to discover that not only is seven cents really nothing, but even 50 cents is often nothing. Cashiers round the total as best they can, to 25-, 50-, or 75- cents after the full pesos, but more often than not patrons such as myself simply don't have monedas, and then the cashier just knocks the cents off the total. So they're grateful when you actually give them a moneda to pay for the cents of your total, but if you don't have any, that's how it goes, just to be expected.)
->You've learned that crisp bills carry clout. You will often get looks based on how crumpled and decrepit your bills are (and it will always be worse the smaller the denomination--there is nothing sadder than a little blue 2-peso note, filthy, torn, stained and wrinkled unrecognizably). You used to think it was silly to care about the state of one's bills--it's not something you can usually control, and it doesn't change their status as legal tender--until you found yourself falling into the same trap, shamefacedly trying to hide the most pathetic bills in between some nice ones as you handed them over to the cashier...
->You appreciate 100-peso bills as huge and very expensive. You are very nervous when paying for a small-ticket item with a 100-peso bill. Until just a month ago, it was the largest denomination there was. (Now they've released the new 500-peso bills, "the jaguar," they're called, for their lovely big-cat design.) You're always apologetic when you do so, and many places will not have change for it. (Also, it equals less than $7 USD...)
ON THE STREETS
->You cross streets like a pro, remembering to always check
behind you (for buses turning into your lane--you'll never see 'em coming!).
->You know to resent things on the road in the following
order: 1) motorcycles 2) buses 3) cars. Motorcycles for their volume (no mufflers, never!), impunity, and sometimes lack of headlights at night. Buses because when they turn, they turn, and God help you if you are in the road.
->A full hour goes by before you process on a conscious level
that there’s been a loud (of course, drum-based) protest on the street outside
your window for the last two hours…
[Corollary: you have finally succeeded in turning the
constant din of horn-honking, grating engines, revving motorcycles, and
squealing bus brakes into a meaningless white noise.]
->You have memorized all the mass-reproduced political
graffiti messages. When they pop up in your world, it's like seeing a familiar face.
LANGUAGE
->You know how to respond to any number of riffs on the
“hello, how are you?” stock conversation-starter you will engage in however
many times a day. (¿Cómo estás? ¿Cómo andas? ¿Cómo te va? ¿Todo bien? ¿Qué tal?)
[Correct answers: “bien,” “muy bien,” or “todo bien.”]
->You know that you must call yourself an “United States-ian”
rather than an “American” (it works in Spanish, but not English—to be fair,
I’ve been careful to never make that faux pas) and that Argentines call their
language “castellano,” not “español.” (This being a funny irony. The Argentine
dialect originally came from the Spanish region of Castile, so yes, it is
“Castilian,” but within Spain “castellano” has a very different meaning: it
simply refers to the language that we call Spanish [as opposed to Gallego,
Basque, Catalan or other languages of Spain—it’s like the distinction between
saying “Chinese” or “Mandarin.”]. So Argentines call their dialect “castellano”
to distinguish it from “español,” and yeah, there’s the irony…)
->It’s easier for you to understand people when they speak to
you in Spanish than when they take you for a foreigner and speak to you in
English.
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