Miscellany
Nov 18th, 2007, 09:53 pm
What’s going on with me:
- I’m pretty much done with my research paper about Muslim identity in Buenos Aires. While it ended up being twenty-five sheets, it really has about twenty-three pages (double-spaced) of content. I needed twenty-five pages of material, so it came up a little short. Oh well. I had more information, but I had to scrap it because it was either redundant or irrelevant. The good news: my tutor read it over, and she told me that I only have a few minor grammatical mistakes. ¡Qué bueno! Since the whole thing is Spanish, my third language, I’m pretty proud of myself for writing so much and so correctly.
- I saw a bunch of Argentine hippies listening to and performing West African drumming and dancing to it very early Saturday morning. I got pumped up by watching people play the djembe, a popular African hand drum and had big dreams of getting back into it when I go back to the US. Yeah, I play it. Watch this video I took:
- My friends and I ate delicious Peruvian food last night. Gotta love the spiciness.
- I typically go out every weekend and stay out until five or six in the morning. As crazy as that sounds, that’s pretty common here, and people still study and make it to work on time. While pretty much everything shuts down at 9 or 10 p.m. in the US, that’s when the nightlife begins in this city. I love it.
- I’m gonna miss all the locally owned and operated shops and restaurants when I leave. While regional, national, and international chains typically offer lower prices, they’re impersonal and lack character. You can actually talk to the owner and his or her family in these mom-and-pop places instead of some twentieth-tier manager who works by book.
- My forty-four year old host brother constantly says “Hay crisis” (“There’s a crisis”). I have no friggin’ clue why. He says it out of no where, and the conversations generally have nothing to do with crises. I could be talking about eating chocolate ice cream, and he’ll somehow find a way to fit in “Hay crisis.” He’ll say it an average of twelve times a day, and that’s just when I’m around. And I’m pretty sure it’s not an Argentine thing because I haven’t heard anyone else say it so much.
- This Pakistani uncle that has lived in Argentine for eleven years told me two Fridays ago that he hates the US. That really, really, really ticked me off. He didn’t say it to offend me, but he was just adding commentary when these Argentines were asking me about life in the US. Okay, I understand why people across the world are pissed off at American foreign policy and the government’s actions in other countries, but to tell someone they hate your country just crosses the line. I probably have more of a reason to say I hate Pakistan than him saying he hates the US since Bengalis were politically, economically, and socially marginalized when Bangladesh was part of Pakistan, but obviously I’m not the kind to hold grudges against an entire country and people instead of the country’s policies. He apologized soon afterwards.
