Ashley- Brazilians in Buenos Aires

As you know by now, my roommate, Joyce, is from Brazil. I've decided it's time to outline a few of the reasons why living with a Brazilian has it's perks (and, yes, I realize this is a generalization based on my experience with one person):

1) I'll have a place to stay when I go to Carnaval, or for that matter, whenever I want to go see Brazil...

2) They learn Argentine Spanish in Brazil, which is very distinct. Her knowledge has helped me learn more of the slang that may have otherwise continued to confuse me...

3) Brazilian music is fun!

4) I'm learning how to dance La Samba.

5) They'll come up with endearing nicknames for you, like Yankee (although they pronounce it 'Shankee'). :)

6) When you go out with a Brazilian, everyone assumes that you are also from Brazil (preferred to being spotted as an American in South America).

7) Due to the language barrier, we are forced to speak Spanish in the apartment (all the time).

8) More open-mindedness.

9) Endless joking around...I think we are laughing with/at each other about 90% of the time.

10) We are both interested in learning about the culture here so we can go out and discover new things together; I'm afraid that an Argentinean would lack the desire to explore because it would not be so novel for them.


Okay, so aside from everything going well with my living situation, it seems like there are a TON of Brazilians here. In fact, last night we went to a party for another student at La UBA from Brazil...and Brazilians outnumbered Argentineans. We were excited to go out, but it ended up being little bit of a disappointment. Nobody talked to anyone except for the people they came with, which makes me wonder why they even bothered to leave the house. Also, a lot of the people spoke in Portuguese for most of the night, which made it more difficult for some of us (i.e. me and the handful of Argentineans present) to understand. Joyce and I left pretty early (3-ish) and she was even complaining that the people were annoying for speaking Portuguese in Argentina and that the conversation was dull anyway. I think the antisocial factor of this party was somewhat of an anomaly, but it has put us off from going to house parties here...the boliches (clubs) are definitely more suitable for meeting people (although the guys there seem to think that agreeing to dance also serves as acquiescence to making out...they just try to kiss you like two minutes after meeting you, without warning. Can't dancing just be dancing?). We need something somewhere between these extremes for the weekends. One good thing that came out of the party last night is that we learned that we live about 4 blocks away from "the best bar in Buenos Aires," so we might have to check that out. Maybe it will be a good alternative for us.

A brief digression on the attitude toward vegetarianism here: People think I'm crazy, or they sincerely don't understand the ideology of abstaining from carnivorous eating habits. I've heard responses along the lines of "you can't get married if you're vegetarian" (jokingly, I think) and "it's just a little bit of meat," and even the flat-out "WHY?!". It doesn't really bother me. I understand that it is just a cultural difference in attitude, but sometimes I get tired of defending myself (in a language that is not my native tongue, nonetheless) to people who aren't going to understand or who will always have a retort as to why I should eat meat here. It would be nice if they could think of it in terms of having more meat for themselves rather than trying to convince just to have some. A little tolerance, people!

Well, it's 5:00 here and I'm still in pajamas, so I should probably go do something more productive than praising Brazilians and ranting about intolerant meat-eaters.

Chao!