Just Tango On

Old Córdoba

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc’d it to you,
trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our
players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.

–Hamlet

CÓRDOBA, November 14

It’s 7 A. M. Sunday morning. I’m up early because I am going on a “trekking” exposition to Villa Alpina in the Sierras near Córdoba. Every other city I’ve been to is dead this time on Sunday morning. Here the streets are still crowded from Saturday night.

My room overlooks one of the busiest squares in this provincial capital and the crowds of young people have been yelling, singing, clapping, laughing and blowing car horns all night. There is a dog who stands guard at the intersection and barks constantly. He runs off of the traffic island and attacks car tires. Somehow he is never killed. He never seems to eat. I see him there every day and since Argentine dogs don’t like me as much as American ones, I avoid him.

I am more than a little sleepy. I was up late watching bad movies. English with Spanish subtitles. Or truly stupid shit that just looks funny dubbed in Spanish. Stallone. Some Western. It doesn’t matter. I have memorized the jingles and the commercials’ theme songs. I know the theme song for the overproduced Smirnoff commercial. I note that the man singing schmaltz in the credit card commercial has on a wig and sports a porn-star mustache. I remember the annoying boy that keeps asking his mother “¿Por qué?” when she tells him that her detergent gets the clothes brighter. “¿Por qué?” I know the commercial for the alfajores Blahn-co Blahn-co BLAHN-co Nay-gro Nay-gro NAAAY-gro. Channel surfing I keep encountering the same movies. “¿Por qué?” One week it’s NOTTING HILL with English subtitles. The next week it’s NOTTING HILL with dubbed Spanish, the voice actors sounding nothing like Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. They seemed to have left Hugh Grant’s patented uhhhhhmmmm in the Spanish version without dubbing. “¿Por qué?”

My tour is late picking me up, as usual, so I decide to walk out and get something to drink from the kiosko across the street. The kids look like it’s eleven o’clock Saturday night, the girls still made up and in black dresses and the boys with their arms around them. All around me, as usual, are couples making out. It is spring in Argentina.

I have come to Cordoba for a few days because Buenos Aires has been a bit flat this trip. I am having trouble taking good pictures. Both my writing and my photography seem stale, so last year. Contacts here from before are not answering e-mails. Potential friends fizzle out.

A constant novelty junkie, I seem to need new sights and stimulation to fire up my creativity.

Avenida General Paz, Córdoba

Córdoba, the capital of the province by the same name, is not a collection of once-in-a-lifetime sights, but the people are very friendly and warm, and very good looking and affectionate with each other. People attempt to speak to me but I cannot understand them and I sure as hell clam up if I need to ask someone for something. I can’t seem to remember the words. Stage fright. I skip dinner because I am too shy and intimidated to go. I have snacks instead.

When I left Buenos Aires this past April, the overwhelming anxiety from my language-learning block was too strong I couldn’t confidently return immediately. I got back to the States and all of a sudden, I realized that I had become so visual that I was almost post-verbal. My photography was soaring, my writing was atrophying. I had spoken with one of my instructors in Buenos Aires and he suggested that the issue was that I was going back and forth from the U. S. to Argentina and that every time I did my language would suffer. When I returned the downgrade in my language frustrated and confused me. He suggested that I do lessons by Skype when in the U. S.

I started Skype lessons when I returned home with Gisela Giunti, a private instructor who is in Buenos Aires. Skype was a good tool, because I had become so intimidated by speaking that I couldn’t understand audio files or engage in conversation. Skype gave me the opportunity to work more slowly and to chat via text on those days when I couldn’t understand the sounds of words.

So many people learn by listening that it is frustrating when you are a visual learner. The usual methods of listening to tapes and repeating things really doesn’t work for me and simply increases my frustration.

This dance troupe performed a modern piece with crutches and a wheelchair. I would assume they are part of the Universidad Nacíonal de Córdoba

Here in Córdoba, my intimidation extends to the local bus station. I haven’t been able to ask for a ticket to one of the neighboring towns, so I break down and do the most uncool thing a traveler can do. I sign up for a tour. I’m now truly a turista. The horror! The shame!

I have visions of five minute stops at overlooks and souvenir shops. Kitsch and monuments. I am going “trekking” today, and touring small Bavarian-themed alpine villages tomorrow.

At 7:45, the guide comes into the lobby of the hotel and asks for “Som-WELL.” People have a hard time pronouncing Sam (too nasal), so Samuel is the default name I give them. He apologizes in Spanish for his lateness–“el transport”– and I say no hay problema, or no problem, choking on the original phrase that came to mind “hay no problema.”

I get on the bus and I realize that I shouldn’t worry about my disdain of the picture in front of monument this morning. My fellow day travelers are all people from Córdoba and they all chatter away happily in Spanish. For some reason when I signed up I thought I paid extra for an English speaking guide. I decide to roll with it.

The group is having a fine time, joking, teasing each other and gossiping. I don’t understand much of what they say, but when you don’t understand a language you become much more attuned to atmosphere. This is a happy group. The man who is seated next to me is so quiet I assume he doesn’t speak Spanish, either. As the day goes on, I realize that he simply does not wish to speak to anyone.

The ride gets longer and more uncomfortable. Shocks seem to be an option on these tour vans and we are currently bouncing on an unpaved road. Heavy fog obscures the view. A woman in the group develops carsickness. We have to stop, first for her to change to the front seat, then several times more so that she can get air or retch.

We arrive at the destination. Wrapped in fog and with a light rain, we decide to wait to see if we can ascend. I am happy to see fog. I like it for the pictures. No one else understands but I hop out of the van and start shooting pictures of some cows and horses in the fog.

About 30 minutes later we start out. By this time a man comes up to me and asks if I speak English. He worked on cruise ships and speaks really well. He is from Córdoba. I follow him down the hill and we help an older couple whose car has spun out in the mud. He apologizes for me for not being able to answer in Spanish. The older man smiles and says in English: “I do not speak English. I speak French.”

The hike begins and the group is energetic and the weather is hazy. We see sheep and little flowers. I opine that this will burn off and that we will be in sunshine soon.

On the way up the trail, several friendly people speak to me and I attempt to understand. Normal questions. Where am I from? What do I do? I stumble and stutter and ask “¿como?” more than a few times. The people communicate with me on a more basic level, though, and we all decide that we are muy amable…nice.

Villa Alpina

For a brief moment, I am right and the sun comes out just as we reach a vantage point. A condor begins circling over the valley and I take several dozen pictures, both in the clear sky and in the fog. I am in a foggy state now, my perception altered by my lack of understanding, and so the image I choose for this post of the condor reflects my mood.

When I signed up for this trip I assumed that “trekking” is a synonym for hiking. Instead this expedition turns into rock climbing. Very treacherous and very difficult for me. I pull myself up between car size boulders certain that I am going to fall off and break my camera or my back. I struggle and cling for dear life in a Spiderman pose. Manly code dictates that none of the other men offer me assistance as they do the chicas, manly code dictates that I not humiliate myself by asking for it. However, from the sideways glances and worried looks I know that the others think me in trouble. I am.

I was busy getting pictures of the water while the rest of the group had already ascended to the next level. The wide angle perspective makes the foreground rocks look larger than they are and the people at the top of the picture smaller.

The issue with climbing up, of course, is that you have to come down. By this time you get tired and by this time you get sloppy. I am shaking on several of the rocks and slide down on the seat of my pants like a chica, but I make it down ok, with only a little slip into a creek to ruin my spotless record.

As you will see in my next post, I had a fall down a cliff in Maine in June, so I had every reason to be worried about the fucking rocks, the moisture, the fog and the lack of adult supervision.

When we get to the bottom, we sit a for a half-an-hour and sip maté. There are more questions I can’t understand or answer. but I feel a genuine feeling of warmth coming from the Cordobeses. We bounce quietly on the way home and people warmly say “chau” (proper spelling in Argentina) to me when they leave the van.

The next day I find myself in the middle of the kitsch and souvenir circuit I had feared. It is a boring day, but the bilingual guide does not have to speak English. I understand his commentary in Spanish well enough and quit paying attention to it about the same time I would have in English.

I still can’t speak, though.

I take pictures during the obligatory five-minute vista stop for photos. Turista.

Lago Las Molina, Córdoba

On the flight home from Córdoba, I encounter a friendly older woman who won’t stop asking me questions. I am able to answer some of them, but only by translating English to Spanish and Spanish to English. All this talk about immersion, learning foreign languages in three months, speaking like a native, just doesn’t seem to apply to me. Despite hard work, frustration and the good efforts of my talented instructors, I am still at the beginning intermediate stage. I knew at the beginning this would be hard, but I had been lulled by writers like Tim Ferriss that I could hack my way into speaking a foreign language. Sorry, folks, but the short cuts just aren’t possible for me. I’ve learned that those of us who are really visual have a hard time with this stuff. After a year, I am struggling. It is a long road ahead.

“¿Por qué?“

On the flight home, I read a novel and chuckle as I think about the relevance of the following quote:

The majority of customers, they learn through vision, and most times their eyes are looking up–to the left if they’re remembering information, but they’ll look to the right if they’re lying. The next group learns by hearing and they’ll look side to side. The smallest group learns by moving or touching, and they’ll look down as the talk.

The visual people will say, “Look,” or “I see what you mean.” They’ll say, “I can’t picture that,” or “See you later…”

Your audio customers will say, “Listen,” or “That sounds good,” or “Talk to you soon…”

Your touch-based customers will tell you, “I can handle that.” They’ll say, “Got it,” or “Catch you later.”

–Chuck Pahluniak, RANT