Un quilombo
Quilombo is a great word. It refers to any sort of a chaotic disorganized and generally bad situation similar to a "cluster fuck". It's roots are quite racist as quilombos were the small villages that escaped slaves set up it South America to avoid slavery. Apparently they were so badly organized that now the noun is applied to anything chaotic. Other great terms:
me estás jodiendo: are you shitting me
estoy al pedo: literally, i'm farting around (doing nothing)
estoy impedo: wasted
tirarse un pedo: fart
la concha de la lora: equivalent to "mother fucker" but doesn't translate well, neither does, la concha de tu madre. People says these things all the time even though they are among the most offensive things that one could possibly say in the English language.
pelotudear: dick around (pelotudo means dick, like jerk)
googlear: to google
que paja: how shitty/borring
pajero: bum/lazy person
purro: weed
chupar huevos: suck balls
tener una resaca: to have a hang over
estoy roto: literally, i'm broken (for bad hang overs)
estoy en el horno: literally, i'm in the oven (aka I'm fucked)
coger: to fuck, although in España it means "to take," one of the french exchange students asked to coger un taxi when she first got here.
al fondo: chug
cagarse: to take a shit, "me voy a cagar", or to screw someone over, nos cargó (he screwed us).
aprovecharse: to screw someone over
eructo: burp
romper los huevos/pelotas: break somebody's balls
golazo: a really good goal
pelotazo: a long ball (soocer)
es una mierda que: it sucks that
no me jodas: don't fuck with me
Well that's enough of a vocabulary lesson for know. I am presently waiting for the final soccer banquet of the year to put a cap on things. After today I don't have to go back to the campus except for my marketing final. I just got my International Relations final, I have to write a paper between 12-20 pages on two questions. I can write it in Spanish or English and I haven't yet decided which I am going to do. Take the easy way out or do it in Spanish. We'll see. I sent a resume to Microsoft yesterday and I said that I was bilingual with fluency in English (native speaker) and profiency in Spanish. I figure that proficiency is a very broad definition and that I could probably fall somewhere in there even though I need another 6 months to truly be "fluent" at the professional level.
So here I am at the end of my study abroad, pretty much. I am excited to go home, but sad to leave. I realize now that going into my study abroad I set very high expectations for myself. To me, after six months I would be fluent in every sense of the word. Now I realize that that was quite foolish. You can't expect to learn a language in 6 months at the level of someone who has been speaking it all there life. That being said, I have made tremendous gains in my Spanish level. I can speak of pratically anything I want and be understood, although I will make errors and speak slower. Before I came I knew of the verb tenses but I couldn't conjugate them on the fly in conversation. Now, I am very comfortable in the past (preterite/imperfect), future, and present tenses and moderately comfortable with the subjunctive and conditional. I know that I make mistakes and have lots of room to improve but now I have a solid foundation in Spanish from which I can work. It is concievable that I could get an internship with a company with my level of Spanish.
More than the language, though, my study abroad has given me a new outlook. Although this is the end of my study abroad, I am convinced now that I want to pursue more things abroad, so in a way it is the beggining. Already I have found the Fullbright scholarship, there is another nacional scholarship that allows up to a year of study abroad and $20,000 for study in languages in need (one of which is Portuguese). I figure the jump to Portuguese from Spanish would be relatively easy given their simalrities and it is concievable that I could learn it in much less time. In reality, my Spanish education wasn't the most efficient with the exception of BC and one class at UW. Most of it is bullshit exercises that don't even really help you. If somebody did focused studying while living in the country I bet they could pick up a language to a high degree in 6 months. Romantic languages that it is. Not Chinese or Arabic.
So, cool though. Technically I "speak" Spanish. So in theory I can comunicate with most of the people living on North and South America (not Brazil), Australia, England, and wherever else. Although, I also have to keep in mind that the Spanish I have learned is by no means the same as the Spanish of Mexico or Spain. The "vos" form is an anomaly in the Spanish world, as is the strange double "l" accent that makes a "j". But, at least I can communicate. Well now I am done with classes so I will be spending my time with my friends, seeing more parts of Argentina, studying, and working on my Bonderman proposal. I have been in contact with one of my friends from Hidden Valley Camp who is now attending UW law and one of his friends got a Bonderman and he has agreed to meet with me over a beer when I get back. So hopefully that comes together. It's weird to think about the study abroad ending. Everyone who came from their respective countries will all go back to their schools and to their lives. It is likely that we will never see each other again. Maybe in my lifetime I will see half a dozen of them at random junctures of my life if I happen to be in a particular area, but really the study abroad was just a bunch of people in the same place, at the same time, sharing a common experience. Don't get me wrong, I had an awesome awesome time, but it is an isolated event in time, that can't be replicated nor relived. It was, and it was great, but it is no more. But things move on. My family will come and I will show them all that I have learned in Buenos Aires and i will get to relive my first experiences through them as they discover the intricacies of Argentina: the colectivos, la mondea, mate, parrillas, carne, fernet, gancia, vino, bariloche, el camino de los 7 lagos, la casa rosada, belgrano, san telmo, el subte, boliches, merriendas. There is so much to know and I am excited to share it with them and to guide them. So one good thing ends, but another even better thing begins. I'm actually jumping the gun on this as there are 3 weeks left until they get here but for some reason I was motivated to type and I have been thinking about all of these things for a while. That's all for now folks, talk to you soon.
taylor
me estás jodiendo: are you shitting me
estoy al pedo: literally, i'm farting around (doing nothing)
estoy impedo: wasted
tirarse un pedo: fart
la concha de la lora: equivalent to "mother fucker" but doesn't translate well, neither does, la concha de tu madre. People says these things all the time even though they are among the most offensive things that one could possibly say in the English language.
pelotudear: dick around (pelotudo means dick, like jerk)
googlear: to google
que paja: how shitty/borring
pajero: bum/lazy person
purro: weed
chupar huevos: suck balls
tener una resaca: to have a hang over
estoy roto: literally, i'm broken (for bad hang overs)
estoy en el horno: literally, i'm in the oven (aka I'm fucked)
coger: to fuck, although in España it means "to take," one of the french exchange students asked to coger un taxi when she first got here.
al fondo: chug
cagarse: to take a shit, "me voy a cagar", or to screw someone over, nos cargó (he screwed us).
aprovecharse: to screw someone over
eructo: burp
romper los huevos/pelotas: break somebody's balls
golazo: a really good goal
pelotazo: a long ball (soocer)
es una mierda que: it sucks that
no me jodas: don't fuck with me
Well that's enough of a vocabulary lesson for know. I am presently waiting for the final soccer banquet of the year to put a cap on things. After today I don't have to go back to the campus except for my marketing final. I just got my International Relations final, I have to write a paper between 12-20 pages on two questions. I can write it in Spanish or English and I haven't yet decided which I am going to do. Take the easy way out or do it in Spanish. We'll see. I sent a resume to Microsoft yesterday and I said that I was bilingual with fluency in English (native speaker) and profiency in Spanish. I figure that proficiency is a very broad definition and that I could probably fall somewhere in there even though I need another 6 months to truly be "fluent" at the professional level.
So here I am at the end of my study abroad, pretty much. I am excited to go home, but sad to leave. I realize now that going into my study abroad I set very high expectations for myself. To me, after six months I would be fluent in every sense of the word. Now I realize that that was quite foolish. You can't expect to learn a language in 6 months at the level of someone who has been speaking it all there life. That being said, I have made tremendous gains in my Spanish level. I can speak of pratically anything I want and be understood, although I will make errors and speak slower. Before I came I knew of the verb tenses but I couldn't conjugate them on the fly in conversation. Now, I am very comfortable in the past (preterite/imperfect), future, and present tenses and moderately comfortable with the subjunctive and conditional. I know that I make mistakes and have lots of room to improve but now I have a solid foundation in Spanish from which I can work. It is concievable that I could get an internship with a company with my level of Spanish.
More than the language, though, my study abroad has given me a new outlook. Although this is the end of my study abroad, I am convinced now that I want to pursue more things abroad, so in a way it is the beggining. Already I have found the Fullbright scholarship, there is another nacional scholarship that allows up to a year of study abroad and $20,000 for study in languages in need (one of which is Portuguese). I figure the jump to Portuguese from Spanish would be relatively easy given their simalrities and it is concievable that I could learn it in much less time. In reality, my Spanish education wasn't the most efficient with the exception of BC and one class at UW. Most of it is bullshit exercises that don't even really help you. If somebody did focused studying while living in the country I bet they could pick up a language to a high degree in 6 months. Romantic languages that it is. Not Chinese or Arabic.
So, cool though. Technically I "speak" Spanish. So in theory I can comunicate with most of the people living on North and South America (not Brazil), Australia, England, and wherever else. Although, I also have to keep in mind that the Spanish I have learned is by no means the same as the Spanish of Mexico or Spain. The "vos" form is an anomaly in the Spanish world, as is the strange double "l" accent that makes a "j". But, at least I can communicate. Well now I am done with classes so I will be spending my time with my friends, seeing more parts of Argentina, studying, and working on my Bonderman proposal. I have been in contact with one of my friends from Hidden Valley Camp who is now attending UW law and one of his friends got a Bonderman and he has agreed to meet with me over a beer when I get back. So hopefully that comes together. It's weird to think about the study abroad ending. Everyone who came from their respective countries will all go back to their schools and to their lives. It is likely that we will never see each other again. Maybe in my lifetime I will see half a dozen of them at random junctures of my life if I happen to be in a particular area, but really the study abroad was just a bunch of people in the same place, at the same time, sharing a common experience. Don't get me wrong, I had an awesome awesome time, but it is an isolated event in time, that can't be replicated nor relived. It was, and it was great, but it is no more. But things move on. My family will come and I will show them all that I have learned in Buenos Aires and i will get to relive my first experiences through them as they discover the intricacies of Argentina: the colectivos, la mondea, mate, parrillas, carne, fernet, gancia, vino, bariloche, el camino de los 7 lagos, la casa rosada, belgrano, san telmo, el subte, boliches, merriendas. There is so much to know and I am excited to share it with them and to guide them. So one good thing ends, but another even better thing begins. I'm actually jumping the gun on this as there are 3 weeks left until they get here but for some reason I was motivated to type and I have been thinking about all of these things for a while. That's all for now folks, talk to you soon.
taylor
Comments