What I Do

Have you ever thought about the way we ask people what their profession is? What allows them to eat and put clothes on their back? 4 simple words - What do you do? You know exactly what they mean when they say it. They're not asking you if you take showers or baths, if you grocery shop twice a week or once a month, if you spend your weekends playing or watching sports. Do you remember when people used to add (for a living?) at the end of the question? But that has been phased out. Because this definition of DO is society's most important. No specification is required.

Your WOTD is:trabajo [trah-bah’ho] : job, work Listen

And you can also relate to the verb:

trabajar [trah-bah-har'] : to work Listen

I do many things. But as a trabajo, I teach English - specifically to Spanish-speaking Argentines in international companies and private classes. There are a few other freelance trabajos I have been able to add to the list, but teaching is my day-to-day trabajo. Teaching EFL (English as a Foreign Language) is not for everyone. It's the same as someone saying that teaching, in general, is not for everyone. For many years in my young(er) life, I wanted to be a 3rd grade teacher. Mrs. Burr, her 247 stuffed bears, and her compliments (with stickers!) on my creative writing had really gone to my head. Later, when I realized I despised babysitting, I had a change of heart. When I discovered the idea of traveling to another country to teach adults, I was thrilled.

Screaming USofA in Flip-Flops

I’ll start by saying that I have nothing against flip-flops. Sincerely. They make a comfy, incredibly economical concept for our feet. I remember back in high school and college when flip-flops identified a person. This is when designers and marketers got smart and somehow succeeded (and still do) in selling a $50 contraption of rubber and toe floss to a certain niche. First there was Reef, and then there was Rainbow, and then the 20 different colors from Old Navy for $3 a pair which some only donned post-pedicure. Now I have no idea what’s going on in the flip-flop scene of the United States, but I do know that they have continued to remain popular among university study abroad students at least. Of course, South Americans are not unaware of flip-flops. And yes, they even have their own word (actually, two) which will be your W(s)OTD:

chancleta [chan-clay’-tah]: flip-flop

ojota [o-ho’-tah]: flip-flop

The thing is…chancletas here are not considered acceptable for everyday wear around the city. I learned this the hard way during my second week in Buenos Aires. At the end of my first date with an Argentine, it started to rain. And then pour. It was summer, and I had put on a skimpy pair of ojotas without thinking twice. We dashed across the street to get to my bus stop (jay“dashing”, of course). I stepped up on the curb, and BAM. I was on my bottom in a puddle. I could have blamed it on clumsiness, but it was more likely a mix of that and my no-traction chancletas. The Argentine didn’t really know how to react. He had most likely never seen a woman fall on her butt due to her own lack of grace and the inability to choose appropriate footwear. (I have yet to see an Argentine woman under the age of 70 fall on the sidewalk.) Nevertheless, he gave me his arm and then never called again.

It bothers me in the least if foreigners want to stick out like sore thumbs before their lips even part. And when I see two guys walking down the avenue in shorts and ojotas in 60° weather, I can practically sniff the United States spirit (and their feet, of course).

Jaywalking

In elementary school, Mrs. Jackson provided each of us with dictionaries one day. She told us to close our eyes and gingerly thumb through the pages, stopping on whichever page we chose. My finger landed among the thin pages of J. Next, we were told to look at the words on our page and pick one that we had never seen. I picked jaywalk and wrote it up on the chalkboard. After reading the definition to the class and contemplating the extra explanation from Mrs. J., I remember thinking it was an unnecessary word in my life. I hardly ever crossed streets in busy intersections because I was from Waco…in reality, the suburbs of Waco, and any moderately busy street intersection was always crossed in the comfort of a station wagon or my mother’s big-as-a-boat Cadillac.

To my knowledge, there is not one simple Spanish word for jaywalk, so we must settle with this WOTD:

cruzar [croo-thar’] : to cross (verb)

cruzar mal [croo-thar’ mahl]: cross poorly/bad/wrong (in other words: jaywalk)

Fast forward 18 years or so, and cruzar mal is now part of my daily life. I feel anxious standing on the sidewalk corner. Why would I wait for the red standing man to change to the white walking man when I can just cross now? No cars will come close to me for at least 5 seconds. And there I find myself…across the street. I just crucé mal. Many times I do not wait for the street corner. I take those short, quick glances over my shoulder as I step into the street halfway down the block as if I’m Alberto Contador checking out Lance Armstrong in the 2009 Tour de France to make sure I still have the lead. But one of the biggest threats of cruzar mal isn’t the cars. It’s the little motorcycles and mopeds that the 50,000 BsAs delivery and courier boys use that could potentially give you a whopper of a bruise. In the busy streets of what is the downtown business district of Buenos Aires, it’s not uncommon to see them run someone over every once in a while.

I only think twice about cruzar mal if it’s obvious that I won’t make it to the opposite curb without losing a limb, or…if I’m standing next to or on the corner across from a woman with children who is glaring at me suspecting that I’m a person who cruza mal and will set yet another bad example for her poor Marcelo/a who just 35 seconds before walked by a newspaper stand with nudie magazines plastered everywhere and inquired, “Mamá, Why doesn’t your bottom look like that?”

Ah, the thrilling monotonies of daily life in the big city…

Torta de Zanahoria

Your WsOTD:

torta [tor’-tah]: cake Listen

zanahoria [zahn-nah-o’-ree-ah]: carrot Listen

Yesterday, for the first time in over two years, it was my chance to teach my adopted Argentine grandmother a thing or two about baking. Or maybe just a thing. The recipe. She’s got the baking part down to her own science to the point that she adamantly expressed three times how no one knows her oven better than she. True, and that is more of an art here considering that the majority of ovens have no friendly knob with etched centigrade markings. But even those numbers could cause confusion for the United States baker until he figured out how to use the conversion application on his cell phone. What's more, you definitely won’t find any fancy digitalized technology that beeps to give you special culinary hints. “BEEP! I’m warm to your liking!” “BEEP! Did you want to leave my light on?” “BEEP! I think it’s ready!”

So, together with my oven expert, we carefully mixed together first the “wet” and then the “dry” ingredients in order to make a cake that the common Argentine has never heard of nor tasted: torta de zanahoria (carrot cake). Coaxing an Argentine to try a new recipe is a topic unto itself. They are simple eaters and the vast majority do not delight in trying the newest fusion at the newest restaurant even if they have the money to spare.

While she updated me on her children and her true, non-adopted grandchildren, I finished off the coffee she had percolated earlier that morning and waited patiently to see if the finished torta would please her as much as it had me. Timers are often thought to be an unnecessary kitchen ornament with the sense of smell serving as a useful replacement. And to the trained nostril, this almost never fails. The aromas of cinnamon, zanahoria, brown sugar, and orange (the secret to this recipe) began to seep out from the trusted oven, the door was hatched, and our torta was ready. I copied the recipe into Spanish for my “grandmother” and even taught her the adjective yummy in English. She put her new word to good use because mmmm, it was yummy.

This is the recipe we used.

When Whistling Works

I thought the burnt kettle might actually stick around and cool off for a little while, but she got thrown out into the street along with the rest of Friday's useless garbage. Poor little thing...I wanted a picture to commemorate her months of service. She was white with little flowers. As a result of her tragic destiny, she ended up grayish black with melting petals. Oddly enough, I believe someone might have premeditated our feminine teapot's untimely death. About a week ago a big, blue, masculine teapot showed up in the apartment. Come to think of it, I didn't ask why or from where. He just appeared, sat patiently next to the stove letting the lady do her job for a week or so, perhaps taking pointers, and then took over as the protagonist teapot as of this morning. Because he's a male teapot he's bigger and holds more water which never impressed me because I only need enough for one cup of coffee. But he does whistle...something extremely characteristic of all males here in Buenos Aires. This whistle, for once, is appreciated.

Your WOTD:
silbar [sil-bar']: to whistle Listen

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Gashes in your Lashes

It's quite possible that you've never noticed missing patches of hair on someone where it should be. I’m not talking about receding hair lines or overestimated waxing. The Mayo Clinic describes Trichotillomania (trik-o-til-o-MAY-ne-uh) as an irresistible urge to pull out hair from your scalp, eyebrows, eyelashes or other areas of your body. It is thought that around 1% of the U.S. population experiences the disorder.

Of all the possible places from which to pluck your natural layer, one area in particular might invite the most attention. Your WOTD:

ceja [say-hah] : eyebrow Listen

What causes this strange compulsive disorder? The most trying for individuals who suffer the symptoms is the fact that those who have never experienced a similar peculiar comfort cannot come close to relating. Who on earth would want to knowingly damage his natural symmetry? Some loved ones go so far as to put tape across the cejas of their poor picking person. An unfortunate individual with this habit will often lie nonchalantly when asked. “Oh, my waxing lady messed up.” Yeah right. Or, “Oh, I accidentally shaved that part off with a razor.” That’s about as believable as a stammering 16 year old swearing that the plum-colored hickey is a curling iron burn. Come to think of it, even that’s hard to say these days as I have this notion that curling irons are not quite used by masses of women as they were 10 to 15 years ago.

Discovering this particular type of compulsive behavior makes me wonder how many of us suffer from concealed self-destructive actions. It seems as though something’s not right. Is it possible this particular disorder, even if not identified, existed a century ago? What about eating disorders, self-mutilation, etc? I’m not so sure we can blame all this on global warming.