Notes on Argentine Culture #9: General Observations

·         Stray animals are much more common here. Whilst I was in Bariloche, I saw millions of stray dogs every day. The odd difference is that stray animals here are somehow well kept. They don’t look like flea-bitten, rabies-ridden heaps of shredded fur with red eyes and missing body parts like they do in the US. Sometimes, you can look at the dog and seriously ask yourself if it’s stray or if this is the inspiration for that Baja Men song…You might even be overcome with the urge to pet it. In Buenos Aires, it’s more stray cats than dogs, and sometimes they are the mewing balls of disease you’d imagine (saw one with a missing eye once L ). But the people have taken pity on the kitties, as in many famous public areas (botanical gardens or the Recoletta cemetery), they are cared for.

·         The kissing—Argentina, like some other places in the world, has a custom of greeting or bidding farewell with a kiss on the cheek. Here, it is one kiss, on the right cheek. When I say kiss, I don’t mean with lips and romance and jealous girlfriends every time you meet up with someone. I mean, you more or less “kiss” merely by touching cheeks. And it’s not just if you’re in the mood to do this, or you only do it to one person. For example, if I was having a birthday party with 20 guests, in addition to me kissing all 20 guests that arrived, each new arrival would kiss all the guests already there. So lucky guest 20 would have to go around the room and kiss 19 people. And the first person to leave would have to do the same. Sometimes it’s ridiculous when there’s a lot of people (ie: more than 3) but it’s a tradition I love and that I’m planning on bringing to the US with me even if it makes people uncomfortable.

And yes, to answer your question, men kiss men, women kiss women, women kiss men and men kiss women. It doesn’t matter if your straight, gay, single, married, depressed, old, young ugly, crazy or any other variation—you’re not arriving or leaving without a kiss.

·         NO—“No” is only 1/3 of an answer here. Even with conviction in your voice, you have to say no at least 3 times before it really means no. Without conviction, it will never mean no. So if you’re undecided, it’s probably going to come off to whoever is asking as a yes—so be careful with men and more dessert. This is different than in the US where no can mean “ABSOLUTELYNONOTEVERNOPEWHYWOULDYOUEVENASK” or it can mean “OMGYESIWASHOPINGYOUWOULDASKMEBUTIDON’TWANTTOLOOKLIKEIDIDWANTITSOI’MGOINGTOSAYNOANDHOPEYOUUNDERSTANDTHATITMEANS100%YES” and whoever’s asking has to decipher the real answer. Here they’re going to assume the latter until you clearly assert the former. Sometimes it’s kinda nice because I can cave into things and blame it on the asker; but other times, like with men, it’s like by the 8^th no, I’m going to kill someone. 

·         Jews!—Ok this is not a note on Argentine culture but on Israeli culture. I didn’t realize that all Israelites have a 2 year term in the military. After their tour is up, they generally go travel somewhere for several months as they’ve “earned it”. Additionally, they generally all speak English. I know US-Israel relations make that statement seem obvious, but I never met anyone from Israel before! I mention this because 90% of everybody in my hostel in Bariloche was from Israel. And they told me there’s always a Jew somewhere in every corner of the world…And just like the stereotype goes, they ARE hilarious.

·         Students—Students here seem to be really friendly to the foreigners, which was surprising because Argentina’s general attitude towards us (especially as tourists) seems to not be so favorable. They seem eager to meet international students as well as help us with anything we have questions about. They aren’t afraid to admit the flaws of Argentine politics or agree with us on aspects of their culture that make no sense.

 

·         Text books—Are suuuuuuuuper cheap!! Why? Because they’re not the 398^th 2012, 5 minutes from now edition. They are a series of articles and other relevant materials compiled by your professor and printed en masse by the university. They’re essentially just spiral notebooks that can be really big or small, depending on the type of class. My priciest book was $67 pesos, so that’s ~$16 USD. The better part is that because they’re organized specifically for your class by your professor, there’s not extraneous material and you don’t have to skip around. You’re basically just holding a big syllabus in your hands. And you can write in them all you want because it’s not like you’re going to sell it back to Amazon or the bookstore…