Argentines — They're Just Like US!

Okay, I'll admit it. Sometimes I spend days thinking about the titles before my posts before I write them, and this was one of those times. Unfortunately, chances are that no one who reads this blog — hi Daddy and Grandma! — will get the joke, since they are all far too dignified to read US Weekly.

(For the record, US Weekly has a section called Stars — They're Just Like US! that has pictures of movie stars doing things like pumping gas and buying coffee at Starbucks. I know your IQ probably just dropped by like five points. Sorry. Y'all are smart. You can handle it.)

Anyway. On Saturday night, I had my first, and possibly my only, playdate with Real Live Argentines. This was a phenomenal achievement, since I have been here for four months and made exactly zero Real Live Argentine friends. But on Tuesday after my last Genocides class, I was invited along with Cassie (the other exchange student in the class) to a bar by Juli and Ceci, the Argentine girls we've been talking to in our práctico for awhile now. They introduced themselves about a month ago by offering us candy, and we started talking.

We planned to meet at Acabar, a bar in Palermo where patrons play board games while eating dinner and drinking beers, at 8.30 on Saturday. I got there at 8.35 and Cassie got there 5 minutes later. Juli showed with her twin sister a little past 9, and Ceci didn't get there until almost 9.30. I should have known better than to get there on time. In Argentina, half an hour late is early.

We got a table in the corner of the restaurant, ordered dinner, and talked. And talked. We didn't leave until 2.30 in the morning, at which point we had covered subjects ranging from fake IDs to Ceci's upcoming trip to Europe to the (inexhaustible) topic of the differences between American universities and UBA. All in all, the only really notable part was how similar it was to a dinner between friends in the United States.

The Argentines gossiped about UBA students and professors, and advised Ceci to bring rain gear to London. The one really interesting part, especially from my extranjera perspective, was when Ceci and Juli told us about the interviews they conducted, for a seminar they're taking together, of people who live by the Olimpo, which was one of the biggest detention centers in the city during the dictatorship. Juli described one man she interviewed who actually walled off his balcony so he wouldn't be able to hear the screams of the people being tortured across the street.

Then we split a chocolate cake and talked about the best brands of alfajor.

I think it's taken so long to make Argentine friends because I'm only just starting to really be able to not only talk in Spanish, but to communicate. It's taken me this long to feel comfortable enough with grammar and vocabulary that I also have a personality when I speak. Last week for the first time I got a joke from a commercial on TV that was about the words being spoken, not just about physical comedy.

On Saturday night, I was so tired that around 1.30 I momentarily thought I would pass out, but I held my own in the conversation. Too bad I'm about to leave. But I'm glad I made some Real Live Argentine friends before I do.