The Perks of Being a Gringa

Often in this blog I talk about the things I find a challenge with being a foreigner (a gringa) in Argentina, but recently I’ve been thinking about the advantages. There are actually quite a few!

[Disclaimer: number one will make me seem a little antisocial, but please reserve your judgement until the end of this point!]

1. I can hide behind the language barrier. There are times, when I’m just super super tired and dont have the energy to talk. I’m not just talking normal tired, I’m talking tired of tryina adapt to a culture which is foreign to me, trying to do the right thing, trying to keep up with the conversation and understand, tired of trying. It’s at these times, when I feel I can legitimately hide behind this barrier.

That being said, since my Spanish has improved so much I don’t really need to do this! I used to feel exhausted after an hour or two of social gatherings but on the whole now I can understand and follow group conversations, sometimes pitching in. It’s in the evening that I struggle, if it’s been a whole day of socialness, and my pronunciation well and truly goes out the window. In fact I think I even slur my words but I can assure you this is tiredness rather than me being on the vino!

The funny thing is that I sometimes don’t understand the specific details of what someone’s saying. Recently Javier asked me to show his mum how to use the exercise bike and I understood the gist but was unsure on the specific detail and he thought I was playing when I said I didn’t understand 😂 I did understand but I also didn’t fully haha.

2. I forever have the “I’m British” excuse.

A few weeks ago on the bank holiday I hosted merienda (the snack meal of the day) in my place for a few friends from church. When I was preparing for this, I actually felt quite nervous! Not only was it one of the first times I’ve ever hosted something on my own in general, it was the first time of hosting merienda. Part of me felt like it was a test, to see how much of the culture I’d soaked in and to see if I could host it well. But it’s weird! Hosting something which you haven’t inherently grown up with, so not always knowing the merienda etiquette. It’s not that the girls would have said anything, or even thought it, but I wanted to do it well!

When I mentioned this in the Glover galz WhatsApp group (with my mum and my sister) they were like, but it’s chill! If it’s not like a normal merienda, it’s fine! Ya British! Ya can use the I’m British card 😂

Anyhow, I needn’t have worried because it was a really really lovely afternoon and I loved it!! The funny thing was that I don’t have a huge amount of cutlery yet (although I have about a billion teaspoons), so cutting cakes and bits was interesting with only two knives available! And then in the end Vale walked off with one of my knives by mistake leaving me with just one 😂 I really must buy some more one of these days

3. For this point, I shall tell you a little story about my recent crumble making adventure.

Last Saturday, I attempted to make a crumble. This was only the second time in my life that I’ve made a crumble and the first was also in a foreign country! I’ve never actually made a crumble in England would you believe!

Well anyways, on Saturday I set to chopping up my apples, making the topping etc. Meanwhile I was having a rather delicious chat with my granny and Auntie over Skype. At intervals crumble tips were suggested. “Make sure you put the chopped up apples in lemon juice”, “are you steaming the apples?”. Neither of which were things I had or were doing. Oh dear. But how badly can a crumble go, right?

So I dutifully de-cored, peeled and chopped up 6 apples, which took a surprisingly long amount of time, but probably was not helped by the fact I do not own a peeler, nor do I own a small knife. I just have a great big whopper of a knife. Must invest in a smaller one too. Anyways, my point here is that I chopped up six apples. Six! The recipe only asked me for three but I wasn’t believing that for a second. The end result of my crumble was that the topping to apple ratio was a little bit off. In fact, it was more than a little bit off, my “crumble” was more like crumble topping with a side of apple.

However!

The upshot of all of this, was when I took it to lunch with a fair few people from church, most people in the room had never had crumble before. Therefore, they did not know this and I could claim that I’d done it how it’s always done.

Everyone was telling me it was really delicious and lovely and I wasn’t quite sure whether to believe them or not. Y’know, perhaps they were just being polite. But I knew it genuinely had gone down a treat when I was asked for seconds. Hurrah!

Next time I reckon I need to do at least 9 apples and less topping but it went down well nonetheless. It’s funny, the three things I’ve baked whilst in my flat have all been with cinnamon. I think it’s because I didn’t have it for so long and then finally I came across it in the shop and I’ve been excited ever since haha. Plus I love cinnamon!

Well, I shall finish there for now because I’ve been rambling on (as per) and don’t wanna bore you! Much love to all at home, over and out x