Cultural Randomness...

Alright, so I'm feeling too lazy to write a coherent blog, but I thought I'd throw out some random facts about Argentina...some might be myth busters, some I might have already said, and some might provoke the thought "Who cares?" So, in no certain order, here we go.

1. Argentine food is nothing like Mexican food. They don't eat tacos or burritos and in fact most of them hate anything spicy. (Hence the fact that one of the first things I will do when I get back is hit up at least one good Mexican restaurant and eat my fill of chips and salsa.) A while back, there was a very large amount of immigration from Italy, so they have a good amount of pastas and pizza.
2. Speaking of nationalities, Buenos Aires is a lot more diversified than one might think due to a large amount of immigration at various points in history. During my time here, I've met people from German, Italian, Japonese, Spanish, and French descent, to name a few.
3. Argentina currently has a female president: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. She almost always wears her hair down, which for some reason strikes me a little weird after seeing so many U.S. women in politics with short haircuts or pinned up long hair.
4. In Buenos Aires, they have people who work as knife sharpeners that a lot of times ride around on bikes playing a type of flute to let people know that they're in the neighborhood in case they need their knives sharpened.
5. In Buenos Aires, part of the rest of Argentina, and a few parts of the surrounding countries, the people use a verb form for the informal "you" that basically no other Spanish-speakers in the world use. It's called "vos" and apparently came from the people here misunderstanding the Spanish plural form of you - "vosotros". Basically, upon arrival, I had to re-learn verb conjugations that had been pounded into my head since first-year Spanish.
6. In Buenos Aires, they also have a dialect (basically a whole different vocabulary) called lunfardo. Most of lunfardo is derived from Italian and a lot of it sounds nothing like official Spanish.
7. Here, they say they don't speak "Espanol" (Spanish) but rather "Castellano" (Castilian). The funny thing is, my friend who lived in Spain for two years say that Spain Spanish is actually "Castellano" and Argentinian Spanish is a messed-up form of "Espanol".
8. Here, the typical greeting is a kiss on the left cheek, and it's usually polite to greet basically everybody in the room or at the even that you know, and anyone you don't know but happen to be near when you come in.
9. When saying goodbye, they say "chau" (pronounced like the Italian "ciao") instead of "adios". When talking on the phone or writing an informal email, a typical closing is to say "Besos" or "Besitos" (literally, kiss) which refers to the traditional kiss on the cheek they would give if they were talking in person.
10. In Buenos Aires, I'm pretty sure there is no legal "right turn on red".
11. The day has 3 meals and one "snack" - breakfast before starting the day, lunch around 1, merienda (tea-time) around 5 or 6, and dinner around 9 or 10. My family eats dinner around 8 or 8:30 but everyone else thinks that's weird and super early. The latest I ever ate dinner (at a friend's house)...well, we finished at 1 a.m.
12. When they say they "drink milk" they hardly ever refer to actually drinking a glass of milk. What they almost always mean is drinking tea with a little milk, coffee with a little milk, or hot chocolate made with milk. They also find it weird that we sometimes (in the U.S.) eat eggs and meat for breakfast.
13. Argentina is known for it's good beef and it used to be that steak or beef for dinner was more common than chicken because steak was cheaper. Now, there's some political hullabaloo between the president and the beef producing farmers/companies, so the price of beef has risen a lot :(
14. The tango actually started in the bad parts of Buenos Aires and was danced by the equivalent of today's gangsters or "tough guys". At one point, the music of the tango itself was illegal in Argentina.
15. Peanut butter is very rare here and most everyone I've met doesn't like it. That's why I am greatly appreciative of my parents who brought me two jars of peanut butter, three types of Reese's, Butterfingers, and Tagalongs :) :)

Well, I think that's all for tonight...I'm sure there's plenty more, but I think my brain just quit on me, so that's all the cultural randomness for the day. Until next time...