Ocho observaciones- Eight observations

Observaciones del día culturales (Cultural observations of the day)

• 1. Desayuno/breakfast- As I have mentioned, the body clock and eating schedule varies in Argentina. Porteños don’t eat lunch until 2 to 3 p.m. at earliest, dinner 9 to 10 p.m., and they go out between 1 and 6 a.m. So if I start work at 9 a.m., how does your stomach handle hunger between 7 to 8 a.m. when you wake up and 3 p.m. when you eat lunch. Answer: They load up on mate, coffee and tea with some galletitas (little cookies, like crackers) and it fills their stomach until lunch time.
• 2. Música/music- Eighties rock is where it’s at in Argentina. They love American rock music. And they know the lyrics in perfect English. They couldn’t tell you what it means, but can sing every word to Queen’s “Somebody to love.” Or Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” Our taxi driver from La Plata the other day belted out the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Bob Marley cds. Latin American music if for boliches/clubs at night, not for leisurely listening!
• 3. Dinero/money- This one’s pretty funny. If you’re buying anything in Argentina from a Subte pass to food to gifts, you better have exact change. In the United States, we’re under the impression that you’re valuing the company you’re buying something from by providing them with business, so they are kind enough to make change for you. Pay with a $20 bill at McDonald’s for your $1 ice cream cone and they give you all $19 back. In Argentina, that’s not the case. They’ll deny your sale if your bills are too big. This raises a problem for us because the ATM only distributes 100 peso bills, similar to a $20 bill in the US. But it’s very difficult to break these. Stacey has been denied her morning breakfast and coffee because she didn’t have 14 pesos in change to give them. At the market, where all the vendors are essentially selling the same things, they made us go to another vendor to get change to buy HER bracelets. Crazy, right? And if you don’t find coins somewhere or another, you’re not taking a bus anywhere. Sometimes we’ll buy cookies or café just to get coins, because they won’t give you coins without your business either. Oh Argentina!
• 4. Facebook- Or as they say it, FAYbook. The “ay” sound, like the one in “Ka”tie, is difficult for them to pronounce because that sound in Spanish is the letter E. Or é. So if they say words with an American ay, it’s pretty strong. In a normal conversation around the office, you a lways know when we’re talking about FAYbook because it’s the strongest vowel sound used. Spanish mumbling…mumbling…en FAYbook…more mumbling. If you can’t envision how this sounds, my goal is to record a true porteño voice saying it. It’s great. The obsession with Facebook is also pretty large because it’s on the rise in Argentina. It’s not any more or less common than in the US, but businesses in Buenos Aires are in the transitional period of utilizing social media marketing. That means making a Facebook page (or individual account that you add as a friend as they do here), friending your competitors and keeping tabs on who has the most friends or followers. Everyone from coworkers, waiters to friends we meet in plazas and bars have asked us if we have Facebook, as if it’s the coolest thing in the world. Thanks Zuckerberg!

Observaciones personales

Walking home with my mate today down Puerto Madero

Like a true porteño

• 5. Mate: Now that my coworkers “cured” my mate, it’s finally usable without consuming, you know, dust and seeds. So today they helped me prepare my mate, since I’m back on the 4-5 hour sleep schedule. Knowing that I’m a girl and American, I not only tried the mate de naranja y pomelo (orange and grapefruit flavored herbs), but with an extra spoon of azúcar (sugar). And boy was I on a caffeine high. The combination of the sugar and caffeine didn’t just wake me up, it was painful. My head was spinning in circles and my heart rate was rising by the minute. No more daily mate for me! There’s a reason I don’t drink coffee and tea in the US!
• 6. Cleaning: Monica is our cleaning lady. Yes, our program covers having a cleaning lady coming to our apartment weekly and mopping, dusting the entire house, replacing our sheets and towels and fluffing our pillows. This is way too much of spoiled treatment as a college student. This is not an accurate representation of real life and I don't like it. I know we pay a study abroad program fee, but this just promotes laziness. Don’t make your bed…Monica will! Why kill the fruitfly flying over that grapefruit…Monica will take care of it. I won’t be able to afford a cleaning lady after college, why mislead our minds and lives now by spoiling us? As grateful as I am for what Monica does, I still refuse to let her do the dishes in an effort to be less spoiled.
• 7. Copywriting: One project I am assigned to complete a lot at work is copywriting in both Spanish and English. This means anything from writing captions, explanations or paragraphs to put on advertisements, promotional materials and information about our clients. As a journalism major, I LOVE writing so this is definitely one of my favorite tasks. Although Entercomm mainly works with software agencies as our clients, we still have a variety of clients that are local & even international that have nothing to do with software. A kitchen furniture and supplies company (empresa), construction agency in Los Angeles (I don’t get this one either), event planning agencies and more. I've learned that copywriting is teaching me a lot of skills--specifically being concise, direct, and learning synonyms for words in both English and Spanish since I'm writing in both languages.
• 8. Software: Because our software clients require the most work, I do a lot of translating of press releases from NetApp, McAfee, British Telecom & Quest Software. I'm learning more about IT software, cloud computing and security for PCs then I ever would have wanted to know, and more! Did you know NetApp is No. 5 on Fortune's Best Places to Work in America list, and No. 14 on Boston Business Journal's best places to work in Boston list? Or in my terms, "Esta clasificación en Boston sigue #5 rango en la revista de FORTUNE en los Estados Unidos en la lista de “100 Mejores Empresas para Trabajar” para 2011." This is teaching me a whole new realm of vocabulary as well as helping me learn what software technicians actually do. Who knew?!