Feeling Like a Gringa (Part 2)

As promised, here are my other musings about differences between England and Argentina. Personally, I find cultural differences so interesting! Hopefully you share this opinion with me otherwise you might wanna stop reading this post now as it’s probably not for you 😂

Also, extra points to anyone who noticed I changed the spelling of gringo to gringa! Ironically, this is a classic Spanish blunder. Ale, one of my fellow teachers at the institute, pointed out to me that it should be ‘gringa’ not ‘gringo’ as gringo is for a male foreigner and gringa for a female. Anyways, on with the list…

1. I feel like this is quite well known about Latin America, but being late is not a problem here, in fact it is expected! The only thing that seems to run to time (in my experience) is getting to work on time. As for anything else, just rock up when you fancy! 10 mins late, 30 mins, 60 mins, eh! It’s fine! You do you!
2. Sauces! Here, they put about five different sauces into a sandwich AT THE SAME TIME! They have way more than we do at home as well – celery mayonaise, sweetcorn, golf (mayo & ketchup mixed together), garlic and I can’t remember any more but they literally have tonnes.
3. This one I’m about to mention is potentially partly a reflection on the economic state of Argentina at the moment (although I’ve noticed it other times I’ve been here), but so often when people are talking about products they will say ‘rey barrato’ meaning soo cheap. Generally, I feel that in England we don’t like to talk too openly about money and it can be a bit of an awkward subject. I’ve found it quite difficult arranging my English 1:1 lessons as I have had to set a rate and charge for the lessons! And then accept the money from people! (I started this blog post a while ago and in reality I now have no problem demanding my money from people haha)
4. This is related to the one above, but I have absolutely no idea what is expensive here and what is cheap. 1, because I have to get up Google and convert it into pounds but also 2, because the cost of living here is different than what it is at home. This is reflected in what I earn being substantially less than what I would earn at home! I have to keep reminding myself that it’s not helpful to keep comparing to home because the living costs reflect what generally people can afford. That being said, my finances are a bit of a worry so if you are a pray-er, please keep this in your prayers.
5. A lot of people here have maids who do the cleaning, sometimes cooking and generally tidying up for them. I am so not used to this and sometimes find myself tidying before Marta’s maid comes because I don’t want her to think I am a complete sloven and want her to think I vaguely have my life together. Kind of defeats the point 😂
6. Often there are things that happen here and I’ve missed the Spanish so I can never be 100% sure what’s going on, what we’re doing or what the plan is. Something that I really don’t understand though, is why there are random trees dotted around Salta with loo roll draped (or thrown?) over them? But it’s not just one tree there’s many 😂 and everyone I’ve asked hasn’t known 🤷 if you’re from Argentina and you happen to know please put me out of my misery and tell me because I’m super curious about this one 😂
7. The way people end phone calls here is funny. One party seems to be partway through a sentence and then the other side suddenly cuts in half way through a sentence saying “OKAY THEN BYYEE” and hangs up! (I think my dad is secretly from Argentina as I’ve experienced this with him before hahaha hi dad 😇). This is suuper different than the norm in my family, where it’s like “alright, I should probably go then”, “okay, well it was lovely to have a chat”, “yeah really lovely! Have a nice rest of your day, see you soon!”, “yeah you too! Okay then, byeee!”, “Byeeee!” 😂
8. Goodness me, Argentinian people are animated. On other times when I’ve been here in Arg and I’ve been at the Matus’ house having dinner and there seems, from my point of view, to be a very heated argument going on. I sit there, sinking into my chair trying to not make a sound and not say anything that will make things worse. Then, later, I whisper to Noly, is everything okay? Do I need to be careful to not do anything or say anything about something etc and he’s like ..what? No it’s fine, they were just having a chat 😂 people like to say what they think here and aren’t afraid to share their views with people! As a very non-confrontational person this has taken some getting used to, but I’m getting better at arguing my side if I need to. Haha!
9. This is a very small observation, but whatsapp messages go off like mad here! Sometimes I come back to my phone and I have a couple of hundred messages, mainly from group chats. I scroll up the group chats and it’s pretty much all just memes. The other day I counted and I had messaged/(been in a group chat that had been active) 27 people in one day! In England I feel like people get super annoyed if there’s a billion messages in a chat and take the very mature route of passive aggressively leaving the chat 😂
10. There are certain phrases that I say in Spanish that when I say them people always just burst out laughing. Often when I say ‘mas o menos’ (more or less) and ‘divertido’ (funny). I asked why one time and they just said it’s cute the way I say these things because of my English accent.

To end, here’s a picture of the sky being pretty the other day 😍