Fainá is freaking me out

I know, it’s been a while. Again. I’m actually doing homework nowadays, so there’s less to write about and less time in which to write it. I would have included pictures, but I’m in an enormous hurry to catch a bus in an hour to go to San Juan.

Friday I had a wonderful, odd experience. I was at Pedro and Brenda’s place listening to their friend Guada, who just got back from a three-week trip to the U.S. to visit her girlfriend Molly. Guada talked about how strange the suburbs are: “Shopping strips and closed neighborhoods, and you can’t even tell when the suburbs stop and the city begins! And all the houses look the same!” Strange compared to B.A., where the jumble of shops and apartments is endless. Flights were strange to her because in Argentina they don’t have rules about liquids in carry-ons, and they always give free food and even beer and wine. Pedro learned something new—he didn’t realize that no one kisses as a greeting in the States. So odd and cold! I also had to inform everyone that Texas is not entirely covered by desert. My favorite observation of all was when she said in amazement, “They use turn signals to change lanes on the roads!”

It was wonderful and odd because I am a foreigner, an American in Argentina, listening to an Argentine talking about America as a foreigner. I understood how it feels to be a foreigner, how it feels to be in America, and a tiny bit of how it feels to be Argentine. Crazy!!

Saturday I saw Gamorra, an Italian movie shot documentary-style about a slum controlled by the Mafia. I think. I didn’t realize until it started that it would be in Italian with Spanish subtitles, of course. It was a bit difficult to follow, though my Spanish is getting much better. I was always under the impression that Italians are all very beautiful, but after seeing that movie, I think the Argentines win, hands-down.

For dinner I had yummy Chinese food and learned that dumplings here are called ravioli. And there are no fortune cookies in Argentina. I don’t understand—how do they know the future without fortune cookies?

There was no time to go get bubble tea, but the Chinese woman I met at Immigrations told me it exists here. I’ve also been told I can find cheaper peanut butter in Chinatown (a misnomer, it’s only a couple blocks), and not just any peanut butter, but JIF!! Much better than paying 7-8USD for a tiny jar of Skippy that can only be found in certain grocery stores.

Sunday we had a big dinner at Emily and Whitney’s again. Emily revealed herself to be one of those good cooks that constantly says awful things about her cooking, just like my mother and grandmother (Emily, your potatoes were wonderful!). I tried ratatouille for the first time, and it (Whitney’s) was lovely. I really love this new tradition. This time I think the guests were more Argentine than American, which is wonderful.

Monday I tried a new food that baffles me. It’s called fainá and you put it on top of pizza. But it’s kind of like bread. And it’s cold. Why put a piece of cold, pizza-sized bread on top of a perfectly good slice of pizza? I just don’t understand it. I lie awake a night puzzling about faniá.

Painting is still fun. I finished my first, slightly crooked black-and-white painting last week, and started a new one yesterday. I’ll post the picture next time. The new one is much harder, because it includes a white bottle with a white sheet as the background. I’m starting to understand why, on the first day when the professor asked each of us about our experience with oil, a couple students said, “I don’t like oil because I’m not patient enough.” It’s really hard to lighten something. Which is a problem when there is so much white in the painting.

Poetry is still not fun. Yesterday marked 7.5 hours spent listening to the professor talk about one 28-line poem. He has a remarkable ability to repeat himself over and over with only the slightest variations to indicate that he’s not a robot. At least it’s productive; I wrote most of this entry in class yesterday and a draft of my creative writing piece last week.

Last night I finally went to a club. First time ever. It was Emily’s birthday, and we all had a lovely time. There was this very scary thing though. It’s looks like a thin vertical blue light, but when you let your eyes pass over it quickly, you see a camel (like the cigarettes). It was super-creepy.

Tonight I’m getting on a bus to go to San Juan. It’s a 13-hour ride west of B.A. It has some interesting things to see, but I’m not sure yet what exactly we’ll end up doing because it might rain. I’ll be back bright and early Monday morning.

In other random news:
-Mosquitoes love my knees, but I don’t know why because knees are not very fleshy.
-Mascarpone with blackberries is my favorite ice cream flavor this week.
-A bird gave me a gift the other day that I did not want. Not at all.
-My taxi driver the other day told me, as I got out of the cab, “Que te cases pronto,” which means “Hope you get married soon.” I hope not. That was a rather odd thing for him to say, I think.
-I’ve given up on the proud fantasy that my Spanish has some slight Puerto Rican accent that I don’t want to ruin by attempting to adopt the Argentine accent. No, the only accent I have is American. So I’m starting to try to use vos instead of tú and say j instead of y in llama.
-Today in the grocery store I accidentally asked for perras (female dog) instead of peras (pears), but the clerk kindly didn’t laugh at me.
-There is no direct translation for “awkward,” a word that is very important to me. The closest is “embarrassed” or “clumsy.”
-There is no direct translation for friolenta, a person who gets cold very easily (me).
-I learned that enano means dwarf, as in a small person, but here it is a gnome, not an actual person. That was a relief, because I was politically correctly shocked to hear that there used to be an urban legend similar to Bigfoot (from what I understand) about a crazy enano Enriquez.
-My new favorite saying: Vísteme despacio porque tengo prisa = dress me slowly because I’m in a hurry (picture a king talking to his servants). Pedro explained that it’s because when you rush, you screw things up and cause more delays. Which is true, but somehow I don’t think that saying would be very popular in the frantic States.