The Most Important Man in the Barbershop

Today I finally gave in and got a haircut. Sitting in the barber's chair while the stylist snipped away was easily the most terrifying experience since I've been here. I learned that I am just as incapable of describing the type of haircut I want in Spanish as I am in English, which left me anxious I would walk out with any of the number of atrocious hairstyles that are inexplicably popular in Buenos Aires. Seriously though. Mullets, rat tails, rat tails that start at the top of the head and bowl cuts are all evidently in style. There is a dude in one of my classes with three dreadlocks in the back with the rest of his hair normal.


This time, I avoided my typical blunder of continually repeatedly asking the barber "a little shorter, please," until my hair is way to freaking short. I don't know why I do that. Usually it's because it's been such a long time since my previous haircut I have no ability to comprehend depth and length, and maybe even time and space. Resisting was difficult, especially because one moment had my confidence and self-worth soar to unprecedented levels. Mid-haircut, I was called upon to translate between a barber and a customer who did not speak Spanish, briefly making me The Most Important Man in the Barbershop. I walked out a completely neutral-headed man. Just my style. All in all, a haircut you could set your watch to.


Meanwhile, the correlation between having a two-studded eyebrow ring and a completely indecipherable porteño accent is strong as ever.

Aardvark attack

A quick recap of the past week of my life:

Thursday-Monday

Iguazu Falls last weekend. Iguazu is an uber-majestic waterfall park on the Argentina-Brazil border. It is a bit of a ritual for Buenos Aires tourists to suffer through a 18- or 20-hour bus ride to get there. At the park, my group absorbed the raging splendor of the falls from afar on a series of trails and bridges. Then, we hopped on the Grand Adventure speedboat, surged at kamikaze-like speeds into the falls and got raging splendor sprayed directly in our faces.

The real fun began when we took a break at the snack bar. That's where the coatíes hang out. As we discovered, coatíes are small aardvark-like creatures whose only apparent source of food is bread crusts from the snack bar at Iguazu Falls. 

For real, this place was crawling with aarvarks yo

These guys spend their days with their snouts on the ground hunting for crumbs. They also sucker tourists in with their cuteness for a bite to eat. They have no reservations about climbing onto tables, either. In all seriousness, more so than seeing the actual waterfalls, my favorite moment from the weekend very well may have been witnessing a patron accidentally drop a full sandwich on the ground and watching an impressively alert coatí sprint to his table, snatch the sandwich off the ground, sprint away and devour it in a matter of seconds. 

Actually scratch that. My favorite moment happened on the drive back, when boarding the bus, I slowly came to the realization that our bus came equipped with "cama" seats rather than the semi-cama we paid for. Cama seats, which are considerably more expensive than their semi counterparts, recline all the way back and are comfy beyond belief. Ironically, for several hours I was unable to sleep because I was so excited that I was sitting in a cama seat.

Tuesday

Incubus concert. Lead singer Brandon Boyd shouted "muchas gracias!" after several songs and the crowd went apeshit every time.

Wednesday

MLB playoffs began. I watched the Phillies-Reds game at The Alamo, which caters to Americans desperate for sports that are not named after poultry. 

The bar was packed, albeit with Argentinians who did not know what baseball is. My friend Anthony, a Yankees fan, commented on how unbelievable it was that two American baseball fans are watching the playoffs on a muted TV in a noisy bar in Argentina. 

I picked a good day to get in front of a television as Roy Halladay, my new hero, pitched the second no-hitter in postseason history. When Carlos Ruiz threw to Ryan Howard for the final out, I went berserk, shouting and jumping and running up to high-five a group of Argentine strangers who were startled yet intrigued by my happiness. Alcohol may have been involved. I don't remember for sure; I was too drunk. Needless to say I will be there for the next one.

Thursday

I got tina'd without even saying a word. While participating in a Facebook chat on my laptop, I typed the word 'it's' and was confused to see the 'it-s' on the screen. I soon realized I have grown accustomed enough to the Latin American keyboard that I had reached up for the dash key, where the apostrophe is located on keyboards down here. 

The future

Tomorrow I take the 10-hour bus ride to Cordoba, where I will spend the weekend celebrating Argentina's Oktoberfest. I have ceremonially renamed the festival Doctoberfest in honor of Roy "Doc" Halladay, who, if you didn't here, is a beast with insatiable appetite for blood and World Series victories.

WordReference clinches spot in top 5

Let the celebration begin.

A timely click propelled WordReference.com into Mark Abadi's top five all-time most visited web sites early Tuesday morning. 

The upstart online English-Spanish dictionary whizzed past The New York Times en route to top five status when Abadi, struggling to describe in Spanish the shrill, musical sound he was producing with his lips, flocked to the site to translate "whistle" at 12:23 a.m.

The achievement marks the culmination of WordReference's meteoric rise through Abadi's Internet browser's main page. In late July, it hadn't even cracked the top eight displayed on the Google Chrome "new tab" screen. 

However, Abadi's desire to learn Spanish slang, American football terminology and curse words pushed the site into Chrome superstardom.

The road to the top five wasn't easy. The task required overtaking established Abadi Internet staples such as nytimes.com, philliesnation.com and the700level.com, not to mention late-season threats by Stumble Upon and MLB.

Abadi's general ineptitude in the subjunctive tense helped the site gain a steady amount of daily visits to its conjugator feature. However, it wasn't until two weeks ago — when he forayed to the rarely used French-English translator in his efforts to impress French chicks — that the site began making a serious run.

"That was huge," WordReference founder Michael Kellogg said. "French chicks."

A spot in the top eight opened up in July, when, a day into his five-month stay in Argentina, Abadi realized the online TV show streaming site Hulu was unavailable outside the United States. Hulu's subsequent fall from grace is widely considered the most notable collapse since Abadi began using the Chrome browser half a year ago.

It is unlikely WordReference will challenge the "Big Four" — Deadspin, Facebook, Sporcle and YouTube — any time soon. But at the rate Abadi visits the site — he checked and rechecked the translations of "blind" and "deaf" 11 times yesterday alone — a place in the pantheon is well within reason.

At press time, Abadi was howling wildly in his apartment, wearing nothing but protective goggles, spraying his laptop with champagne.

Soccer thing happens

So, soccer happens here a lot. For my American readers, soccer is a sport played on a rectangular field in which players kick a thing into a net. Whoever accrues more goals after five hours wins the match, although bonus points are awarded to whichever team has more players fall to the ground after incidental contact. Much like mate, fernet and any other terrible, terrible beverage they adore here, you could call soccer an "acquired taste" for me.


I couldn't live in Buenos Aires without seeing what all the fuss was about, so two weeks ago my friends and I headed to the barrio of Boedo to see San Lorenzo take on Vélez Sarsfield. (The fact that I am just now writing this, I assure you, is because it took two weeks for the excitement to taper, and is in no way related to my interminable sloth. Not to be confused with this interminable sloth.) 


The game went surprisingly un-hyped considering it was played between the top two teams in the league (standings as of September 24). But that's the dynamic of the league in Argentina. Of the seven clubs based in Buenos Aires, two dwarf the rest in popularity: Boca Juniors and River Plate (linguistic side note: other English team names include Racing, All Boys, Old Boys and Arsenal). No city in any American major league has more than two teams. It's like Los Angeles: Boca Juniors are the Lakers, River Plate are also the Lakers and every other team is the Clippers. 


Tourists and foreigners are expected to choose one of the two clubs as their adoptive team, as they win a lot, are resoundingly popular and have tourist-friendly stadiums. My friend Ian, who is in his second semester here, inexplicably roots for San Lorenzo, a team whose stadium he is fearful to enter alone. He told me the stadium's the team's hooligans — who stand in the expansive "popular" section of bleachers behind the goal — are notorious for mugging people, starting fights and peeing on the people below them mid-game. Pshaw, I thought. Sounds like an average Thursday night. 


So we got a group of four together and took a bus down to the stadium, stopping at a cafe to enjoy a local microbrew before the match. The microbrew happened to not be a microbrew at all, but five liters of Quilmes, the Budweiser of Argentina. Or at least that's what we expected; turns out the only beer available was Budweiser, the Quilmes of the United States. Ah, Budweiser, my old friend, I thought. I haven't seen you since college.


The four of us then headed to the stadium, which was conveniently located in the heart of an area I affectionately referred to as "Shantyland." I'm sure the throngs of people walking to the stadium made the place safer for the day, but that did not stop Anthony and me from getting a bucket of water dumped on us from a second-story window. The culprit escaped unidentified, which is lucky for him, because I was giving some pretty menacing (read: terrified) looks from below.


The game was slated to start at 4:30 p.m., so we were a little puzzled when we arrived at 4:27 and it had the action had already begun. This fact is memorable in that is the first known instance of something in Buenos Aires starting before its scheduled time. We found our way to our section (not the hooligan zone), but our seats were occupied. We squirmed our way through our row and showed the seat-takers our tickets. They apologized and relinquished the seats, and after the game we talked football over a nice microbrew.


But then I woke up, and I was still standing awkwardly in front of a bunch of guys passively showing them my ticket, blocking rows and rows of fans behind them, who judging by their looks of consternation and implementation of an impressive array of vulgarities, were none too pleased with our display of courage. We retreated to the stairs, where we stood for the remainder of the first half. 


While standing, I was able to take in the scenery. To my left was the notorious popular section. Thousands were packed in there, all jumping, waving flags, banging on drums, pumping their fists and shouting their team songs. Practically everyone was decked out in a San Lorenzo jersey, which I was considering buying but was dissuaded when I saw their prominently displayed corporte sponsor.


All Walmarts aside, the energy in the stadium was contagious. When the popular section started a chant, the rest of the stadium joined in. When a San Lorenzo player got knocked down, the stadium erupted. I didn't even know the words. I just shouted a sustained "ohhhhhh" and threw in a "San! Lo! Ren! Zo!" every now in then when it seemed appropriate. I got into the fist pumping as well, which is done with the index and middle fingers pointing out, almost as if taunting the opposing team's fans. Because apart from the game being played on the field, the fans are also competing against one another, and are equally competitive as the players. Every San Lorenzo shot that went just wide of the goal was applauded and cheered almost as much as if it had gone in the net.


Not that I would know, of course. The game ended in a 0-0 draw, so I have yet to experience my first goal. I suppose this means I have to go back now.

The popular section

Highlights of the game:

• Getting our seats back. The guys in our spots left at halftime and didn't come back. I jumped on the opportunity and reclaimed what was rightfully ours. I even offered to sit in the seat closest to the aisle, so in case they did come back, I would do all the talking. I spent much of the second half praying that wouldn't happen.
• The near-brawl that occured after the game. Once the final whistle blows, the opposing team's fans, who are allotted a sliver of seats in the corner of the stadium, have 30 minutes to exit the stadium, while the home team's fans must remain. (I imagine the type of environment that produced that rule is brawl-conducive.) While the Vélez fans were exiting, some San Lorenzo fans attempted to break through the barrier separating the two sides with a makeshift battering ram before they were stopped by police. Several fans from both sides began throwing chairs and other objects over the tall metal barrier. Nothing became of the altercation, although apparently the cops resorted to teargas at some point. 
• This kid:

I had my camera on him for much of the second half but was unable to catch him during one of his adorable angry fist pumps. 

The next day, I told another international student I went to my first game. "Cool!" she said. "Boca or River?"

RIP, STB

Tonight, I sit in my room, typing lugubriously onto a mournful computer screen, pausing only to wistfully look out the window, pondering what could have been. 

Tonight, I shaved my sweet 'tina beard. 

My sweet 'tina beard served me admirably in its short but meaningful life. I had grown it for two weeks (Bam! Pluscuamperfecto'd), long enough to earn praise and admiration from nearly eight classmates and I can only assume at least half of the ladies in the greater Buenos Aires area. Porteño chicks dig the scruff. 

I conveniently refrained from much photography during facial hair-phase, so you'll just have to take my word  that it was breathtaking, and in no way just a byproduct of my boundless sloth. I take solace in the fact that he is now in a better place, although now that I think about it, it is entirely plausible that he disintegrated in the sink drain after extended contact with Buenos Aires tap water. Either way, it's time to raise some hell with my newfound silky smoothness. RIP, STB.

Are you ready for some (American) football?!

I was flipping through the channels last night when I landed on ESPN Deportes, the Spanish-language offshoot of the Worldwide Leader. I was pleasantly surprised to discover they were broadcasting the Redskins-Cowboys game, as yesterday was the first full day of the NFL season.

I quickly related my excitement to my housemates, who, being from Colombia, Spain, the Netherlands and Austria, didn't care.


But what a relief it was for me. Argentina revolves around soccer. Multiple matches are broadcast nightly, whether Primera Division, minor league or even European. The country's field hockey team just won the Women's Hockey World Cup but caused only a minimal stir here. And although Argentina had the top-ranked basketball team in the world entering the FIBA World Championships, the team likely never drew more attention than a regular-season soccer match.


So my shock at seeing an N.F.L. football game is understandable. Both commentators spoke in Spanish, which allowed me to pick up some useful translations of football terms, something that will come in handy when talking to absolutely no one about American football. (On a related note, this glossary is coming in handy when talking to myself about baseball.) One of the colormen was also fluent in English, based on his pronunciations of player names and his usage of terminology like "the cluster," which I'm sure leads to some crazy on-the-job code switching.


Anyway, I watched the final Cowboys drive with my Spanish housemate Jorge, who had never seen an N.F.L. game in his life. I took it upon myself to diagram as many of the rules of football as possible in 90 seconds. And I did a decent job, until the game-ending holding penalty, which I tried my best in broken Spanish to explain, although I'm pretty sure Jorge left more confused than he had started. Poor guy. We'll work on it again next Sunday.


All this came a day after my first-ever Argentine futbol game. Reflections on that coming later. People got teargassed though.

Getting 'tina'd

Six months ago, I was sitting in a classroom in UNC's Global Education Center listening to an adviser during a mandatory meeting for students studying abroad in Latin America in the fall. Midway through the meeting, she invited in a panel of students who had studied in Latin America to share their advice and provide us with expectations. 

The most memorable moment came when every student told us to expect our English to be horrible upon our return. Expect to say crazy things like “I have 21 years” rather than I'm 21 years old, because after five months you´ll be translating directly from Spanish to English instead of the other way around.

Horseradish, I thought. I'm a linguistics major. I'm untouchable. I went to Juilliard for Christ's sake.

How wrong I was. The Spanish–to–English literal translations have already begun, to hilarious and embarrassing effect. In fact, you could say my Argentinafication is taking place at an alarming rate.

The first time it happened was during the first week of class about a month ago. When telling a group of friends why I needed to go home, I told them “I need to get ready my apartment.” Certainly an understandable phrase in English, but awkward compared to “I need to get my apartment ready.” I immediately realized I had been thinking of the Spanish verb alistar, which expresses “get ready“ in one word, and my Spanish–accustomed brain didn't split it up upon translation.

Other examples: When contemplating whether to pour myself a glass of soda now or later, I thought “When I have thirst, I'll drink.” Argentina–fied. When talking about the weather, I let slip “It's bastante cold outside.” 'Tina–fied! When describing my experience at a nightclub, I told someone “There was a mountain of people there.” Bam! 'Tina'd. 

I'm actually quite proud of my verbal mishaps. Exchange students tend to wear their blunders as a badge of honor that represents their attempts at cultural immersion. And if I come back to the U.S. sounding like a nearly fluent English speaker from South America, I will know my 'tinafication is complete.