cosas argentinas / argentine things

After a few months, I have become accustomed to certain things that at first surprised me about Buenos Aires living. I love making lists so am going to attempt to explain a few of them that most interest me (in no particular order):

• Porteño Spanish (porteño is a person from Buenos Aires) is called caste-sha-no (castellano), the biggest differences are in pronunciation: “ll” and "y" sounds like “j”/"sh", for example "ella" is pronounced "ay-sha" and "me llamo kate" is prounounced "may sha-mo kate"...While this sometimes makes porteños a challenge to understand, I have grown to love the sound of the language (and I love speaking it).
• Besos (Kisses) - In this country, you are greeted with a kiss on your left cheek, and you are expected to return the favor. You also kiss to say farewell. If you enter a room with 20 people, you go around and kiss everyone (also do this to say goodbye so if you need to be somewhere, make sure to schedule appropriate time to bid farewell to everyone in the room).
• La vida noche (night life) -

  

  dinner at Las Cholas

  Everything here runs a bit later. Argentine´s usually eat dinner around 9pm but it is not uncommon to eat at 10, 11, or even later. There have been times I have met friends at 11 to eat dinner, it´s just no big deal. Dinner also can last as long as one wants, restaurants do not hurry anyone along so many times we will still be sitting at dinner two or more hours after we have finished eating. The nights you go out, there is usually a "previa", pregame, before you head to a bar or club.

  

  previa with friends

  In the US, our previas last for an hour at the most until the party begins. Here, things are a bit different of course. The previas usually start around 11pm or 12am, last for 2-3 hours, and then you head to a  club around 2:30am or 3am.
• Fashionably late takes on a whole new meaning in Buenos Aires. While showing up 10-15 minutes late is considered late in the US, scheduling a dinner for 9 means most people will not show up until 9:30/10. I got invited to a Shabbat dinner a few weeks back and when I asked what time, she asked me if I ran on "Argentime" or "yankee time" (prounced shan-kee). When I answered "yankee" time, she pushed back the original time she had told me by forty-five minutes.
• Transport -
  
  Buenos Aires is a really safe city to live in however there is unfortunately quite a bit of pick-pocketing. When I was here last summer, I was a "pickpocket victim" and I am even more aware of my surroundings now than before. It is very common to see people with backpacks casually swing them around to wear on their fronts as they walk into the subway and I have picked up the habit. Isn´t this a great look?
•  Buena onda/mala onda - onda literally means wave (like a sound wave) but if you say "Ella tiene una buena onda" you are saying "She has a great vibe/is really cool". Buena onda and mala onda are used a lot here to describe people. I have learned that in general Argentine´s have a "buena onda", they are very friendly, helpful, and fun to hang out with!
• Dogs -
  
  People LOVE their dogs here. It seems like everyone in the city has a dog and they are always out walking them (most of the times without a leash). There are also a ton of dog walkers who walk five to twenty dogs at a time, I have started to move across the street when I see a group coming my way as they take up the whole sidewalk! One thing I am not fond of is the absurd amount of dog poop on the streets.  In the US, it is definitely common courtesy to clean it up, here it is not the case. All I have to say is, when walking on the streets here, keep an eye on the ground in front of you.
• PDA - One of the things I do not enjoy as much is the overabundance of PDA found in Buenos Aires. Whether on the crowded colectivos (buses), subtes (subways), in the parks, or walking on the street, you can always find couples cuddling up to each other...there really seems to be no sense of privacy. I also have to fess up...one time I "accidentally" bumped into a couple that were all over each other on the subway...I am not proud of it, but I was getting very uncomfortable standing next to them.
• Trash - 
  
  There are not nearly enough big dumpsters around the city so garbage day, or the day before, or the day before that, trash starts piling up on street corners. ¿Why? The city would look so much better without all of the trash! 
• Inflation - The inflation here amazes me. While in the US we are accustomed to about 2% of inflation each year, the 2012 Argentina inflation rate was about 25%. This has a huge effect on the price of goods, salaries, living, and traveling both for those that live in the country and for foreigners visiting Argentina. At work a few weeks ago I was helping to adjust proposed budgets for 2014. My directions were to first increase all lines of the budget by 40% to adjust for inflation. I was using a budget that had been written two years ago and two years later, everything cost 40% more! Another example is last month the subte (subway) increased from $2.50 pesos per ride to $3.50 to compensate for the inflation. I have been told that salaries get increased by about 20% each year as well, so lots of people do not actually get raises, their companies just increase their salaries to compensate for the inflation. I cannot imagine living long-term in a place where this is daily life. I´ve realized that Argentine´s are not phased by it anymore, they just expect it.
• Chau - There is a huge Italian influence in Argentina...you can see it in the food (lots of yummy pizza and pasta), people´s expressions, and in some of the language. While Argentine´s use "Adios" and "Hasta luego" to say goodbye, they more frequently use "Chau" to bid farewell. I love it!