Life in Argentina

Yesterday’s Events

Yesterday, after waking up from our slight slumber after the New Year’s Party, we ate breakfast ( ugh the sweetness and lack of substance is really killing me!) and chilled in the room, because we realized it would be the only day that we would have to relax before classes started. It was well and good that we stayed in the room for most of the day, because the city was almost completely closed. And when I mean closed, I mean closed. We left our rooms around 4ish to get our lunch ( since we ate breakfast at around 10:30am) and it took us almost a full hour to find a place open that had something to eat. We thought at first that the lack of open stores might be due to New Years, but then realized it might be a combination of both the holiday and the fact that it was siesta time. We finally had the sense to venture to the joints around the beach, as we realized that they would most probably be open to cater to the New Year’s day beach goers. And we finally found a cafe to eat at, but were disappointed at how slow the food came, and how it instantaneously became cold, as the wind was terrible and extremely strong.

Why Would I want to eat a Pancho??

One good thing of going to the cafe (called MisioMar) was that we finally learned what “pancho”, the food item, not a poncho, meant in english, because we were deeply perplexed as to why many restaurants would sell ponchos with food. After taking about 15 minutes to try to figure out amongst ourselves what it could possibly mean, we asked the waitress, and she coolly told us it was a hotdog. Word of the day learned, check.

And I really think that’s the wonderful thing about being in Argentina. Even though I am not taking the Spanish classes yet, I am still learning a lot of Spanish- about the same amount of Spanish I would have learned in high school in a month. Having to speak to natives to buy food, ask for directions and such really gives a speaking experience that beats what I got thus far while in school. I had at first been skeptical as to whether or not I would remember the spanish that I learned in high school to survive here in Argentina, but I am proving that fact wrong every day. Of course, my spanish still sucks very much so. Every time I open my mouth to ask a native something, they start to laugh and ask me where I’m from. I don;t mind, because I do know I sound pretty funny. But the foreign sound of my spanglish to the natives is equivalent to how foreign sounding the Argentine spanish is to me. Here, their “ll” doesn’t sound like a ye/je but a che, and it gets very very confusing sometimes when trying to figure out things.

When Are People Awake in Mar del Plata?!?
By now, you might be wondering why is the title of my blog “When Are People Awake in this Town??” Earlier, I explained how its very difficult to find open food establishments around 4pm-5pm, or anything for that matter. Mar del Plata is like a ghost town, which is mind boggling because its a summer retreat and popular destination for many Argentines themselves. Well, we figured out that Argentines pretty much come out much later at night, almost in droves. You might not see them out during their siesta time of course ( which I’m assuming is at 4ish pm), but you will see them around 11pm onwards, till the sun rises I bet.