¿Shoe Pie for Dinner?

This is a picture of what is for dinner.

 I asked what it was and my host mother replied "Tarta de Zapallitos" (In Argentina the double L is pronounced like a sh, so it sounds like "zapashetos"). My mind went to my internal dictionary and I scrolled through the words in my vocabulary that start with Z. The only thing I could think of was shoes, which is "zapatos", but my host mother always says "zapatitos" which is like saying "shoesies"or "little shoes". I then pointed at my shoes and asked her to confirm that she was telling me that there was a shoe pie for dinner. At this point my host mother and our maid Emmy laughed at me and went to the fridge and showed me some strange vegetable that I have never seen before and said that was the main ingredient in the pie. It is a squash, which is on my list of do not eat foods, but I am going to try it. We will see how it goes. 

 Emmy with a zapallito. She is awesome. 

Bonus Pic: This is the view from my classroom at school. I have crossed 9 de Julio in one light without running. Be impressed. 

The Spinach Scandal

In my homestay I am provided with breakfast seven days a week and dinner five days a week, but I am on my own everyday for lunch. For breakfast I used to have toast, but my host mother kept burning it, and I don't want to eat crusty burnt toast, so I decided to buy some cereal. When the bag that I bought ran out, she bought one like the one I bought and some other kind that looks like frosted mini wheats, but it is stuffed with the gross looking strawberry stuff that I know I am not going to like. Anywho, dinner is mostly meat. Sometimes meat and potatoes, so I decided that I would buy spinach and have it for lunch this week in a salad to get some vitamins and nutrients.

I went off to the fruit stand and I bought a huge bag of spinach, a bag with two romaine hearts and a lemon (for dressing) for 11 Argentine pesos (~$2 USD). The only catch was that the spinach was the dirtiest that I have ever seen in my life. I'm talking visible dirt, roots, just nasty. So I figured it must be extra fresh and I would have to wash it a lot before I ate it. I got home and I showed my host mother my purchases and explained to her that I was going to take the spinach to school for lunch so I didn't have to spend money everyday on lunch and she seemed to understand at the time. She even got me some bowls to wash it in and some newspaper to put it on to dry. I washed and washed like little Cinderella until it was clean and the water was clear. Then I put it in a bag and put it in the vegetable drawer in the fridge.

The two days later I went into the kitchen for lunch after a hard day at school and I was excited about my salad because I bought an avocado the night before and I was excited to have half of it in my salad. I open the fridge and to my surprise, there was no avocado there. I asked my host mother what happened to it and she surmised that my host brother must have eaten it. I could not help but be a little perturbed because she allowed him to eat something she knew she did not buy, but she went out later and bought some more, so I let it go.

The following day I was going to have salad at school so I got up early to pack my lunch and when I went into the fridge to  get my spinach, I noticed that there was a plate already in the fridge with some of my spinach on it that seemed to be leftovers. I thought that was strange, but I went ahead and packed my lunch and went on my way. I had lunch and I had an evening class, so I was happy to get home and eat dinner. When I arrived everyone was waiting for me at the table and as soon as I sat down the maid brought out a bowl of salad, made with my spinach! I could not believe this and I was doing everything I could to stop myself from falling out of my chair. I ate the salad but I kept thinking that maybe they bought some, and mine was still safely tucked in the veggie drawer waiting to be eaten by its rightful owner! To my disappointment after dinner I snuck into the kitchen and there was no trace of my spinach, not a leaf!

I am not sure what to do. What is the world coming to when a woman cannot have spinach in her own house??!! I could talk to them, but I feel awkward about it because they clearly don't think there was anything wrong with eating something they know I paid for with my own money, but I explicitly told her that it was for my lunch, but I don't want to seem like I am selfish, even though it was my spinach. I could just talk to her or write my name on my food, but I don't really think that would do much. I am going to keep my lunch in the fridge at school and write my name on it. I could just write my name on it and keep it at home, but I feel like that is passive aggressive and overtly saying that I have a problem with them eating my food, which I do, but I don't want them to know. I think here are some cultural differences here when it comes to the idea of what is personal and what is communal, but I have a solution for all of this to bypass the awkwardness and confusion of it all. I am going to keep my food in the fridge at school and write my name on it because at least then I don't feel bad about writing my name on it because it is semi public. I just dont want to make waves. I have 3 more months here and I am just trying to keep the peace and not shame Americans everywhere with my selfish ways, but I don't think I'm being unreasonable.

Over and out.

Niggers, Internationally

To preface this post I would like to say there are very few black people in Buenos Aires. Most of the population was imported from Western Europe during the early 1900s and it is very homogeneously white.

              I had a very interesting conversation with my host cousin (I guess that is what I would call him) while watching the United States vs. Argentina basketball Olympic game. We were watching and nothing was out of the ordinary. He speaks English with minimal mistakes and I speak Spanish with many mistakes, but we are able to communicate well. While watching the game he remarked to me about the US winning and he said something along the lines of "Oh, those niggers!" and I was so taken aback and I thought I had misheard him and I just carried on as if nothing happened. He then strikes up a conversation with me about how it is very common in Buenos Aires to call black people niggers and he asked me how common it is in the US. I told him that if he ever goes to the US, he should never, never under any circumstances use that word or any derivative or it when talking to anyone or about anyone black or white or otherwise. Then he asked me why black people say it to each other and I explained to him that it is something that black people can say to each other and to white people, but that he, as a white male should never say it, ever. He responded by saying that in American movies black people say it all the time.

           He then explained to me that it is a word they use to talk about someone who is lazy or a thief or generally someone with no morals or money. They use that word to talk negatively about people from Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay who are considered to be poor and have darker skin that most Argentines because their populations have more indigenous roots than Buenos Aires. In Buenos aires they use this term loosely and in normal conversation. After this he asked me about a scenario.

For example: He is in America and he just got mugged by someone who is black and he sees a

 black police officer and he wants to tell the policeman what happened. What would the cop
do if he said that the man who robbed him was a nigger?

My response was that the police officer would probably arrest you or not take you seriously about the mugging and you would get no justice.

He was shocked. In Argentina, he uses that term in some of the following ways:

    If someone is poor or lazy, they are a nigger.
    If someone is winning at something or you thing they are treating you unfairly, they are a nigger.
    If there is something that you generally don´t like, it is a nigger.

            Shortly after this conversation we went to dinner and he recounted it to his grandmother, my host mother in Spanish and he tells her the ways that it is used in the US and then she says it at the dinner table and I almost fell out of my chair. First, my host mother is 80 years old and she is so sweet and I could not imagine her ever saying something like that, even though I know it means something totally different in their culture and it is not necessarily attached to racial connotations when they say it, but I disagree.

           Of course they do not realize that  the ways in which they use the word are discriminatory and reflect the negative connotations of black Americans shown in American media, for instance that black people are lazy, poor and criminals. They talked about how it is not attached to race when they use it, but the word, no matter how you use it has racial undertones and even though they are not using it to talk about African Americans like Kobe Bryant and Lebron James, they use it to talk about Peruvians, Paraguayan, and Bolivians.

 It seems like no matter how much progress we make in getting away from those stereotypes, they will always linger, maybe not overtly, but someone, somewhere will always be calling someone a nigger.

Disclaimer: I cannot vouch for the validity of the opinion about the use of the word nigger by all Argentines, this is simply the information I gleaned from one conversation with one Argentine.