Gringaology

1. Most everyone brushes their teeth after lunch.

2. Unitards are acceptable gym clothing

3. Babies are transported by means of swaddling them in a really warm, thick blanket and nothing else. Regardless of outside temperature or age of baby.

4. "Que tienes?" means "what's up your ass" in a nice way.

5. Personal space is your problem. If you want it, push someone out of the way.

6. Your place in line is also your problem. If you don't want someone to cut in front of you, defend it with shoulders and a side step shuffle.

7. It is not cool to have an unmatching mani/pedi.

8. French cars are popular here.

9. LA gear lives on in Medellin.

10. In general, yogurt and oatmeal are to be drank and not eaten with a spoon.

11. Many people get sick from eating beans.

12. A lot of people hate onions and do not like spicy food or food with any flavor, for that matter. The blandah the bettah is what I say. Or what they say. If they spoke English.

Leon Trotsky's house.

So, first thing I learned here- gringa is a bad word!  Or at least, not a nice one. I know why, because it came from here, but seeing as my mission is to turn it around and use it with pride, I will go ahead and use just half of it and save the other half out of respect. (For those who don't know, my other name is "la painga." Painga = half paisa, half gringa.)

As it is the year of internet list, I hereby list some observations from Mexico City. At first I was going to give it the title "You know you're a painga IF, but then I read my observations and I was like oh holy graduated cylinders, I have really become a nerd. SO, I hereby name this list you know you're a painga AND a nerd IF:

1. The first place you go is Bellas Artes to see the curtain made of cut glass from Tiffany's...

...  and then you get super nervous when they give you a speech on the history of the museum and say they're going to quiz you afterward and give away prizes. Yes please, I would like everyone to realize that I am the smartest one in the room and give me a prize for it. ( I did not win).

2. You are grossed out by the guy wearing a lab coat in the subway...

...Keep that dirty shit in the lab dude! I am now imagining all the things that could be creeping onto me from your coat... hookworms, trypanosomes, plasmodium, chickunguynanganagu virus, chicken poo, who knows, yuck. Image credit: nightmarefactory.com

3. The second place you go is the Trotsky museum and you are throroughly fascinated that the animal stalls still have poop in them...

...and you immediately take a look to decipher what kind of poop it is, and then after thinking at first it is rat poop, you decide it is mouse poop. You then try and talk to the guide about it and he says, oh it's because they left everything as it was from the day he was murdered in 1940 and then you think to yourself what a fucking idiot, rabbit poop would not last 74 years... definitely mouse poop.

(Image: animal stalls from Trotsky museum. Trotsky believed it was important to always keep connected with the workers and so he raised his own chickens and rabbits. This totally earned my respect, which he is concerned about.)

4. You are puzzled yet intrigued by the large fans in the subway blowing water around everywhere...

You also wonder if there is a real source of the water they are blowing or if they are actually just blowing around the moisture that has accumulated in the air from the naturally high levels of humidity found in this underground hole, which now that you realize, has no ventilation and is really crowded, cue the panic. (Image credit: http://www.cloudburst.com)

5. You LOVE that the food is so picante...

...which makes you think of the experiment that your students did that one time to see if picante kills intestinal worms. Image credit: laspicygringa.blogspot.com

6. You find this sign hilarious.

7. You are really touched by the kindness of strangers.

On the subway I dropped something and I had a seat, and some woman who was standing ran across the train to pick it up and hand it to me, almost falling along way, because the train was in motion. The lady at the sandwich shop didn't have any cut onion when I asked for it on my sandwich, so she got an onion out and cut it up for me. All for a sandwich I was going to pay less than $3 for. Then the sales guy at the shoe store was super worried that I didn't have a map and so he got out his own map and gave it to me and showed me everywhere I needed to go in Mexico and what food I needed to try. What's going on? I mean, it was super nice, but as I write this, I have my scrunched up suspicious face on.

8. The super shittastic weather makes you so cold, that you are forced to buy a new coat, new pants and new shoes, which you are really upset about.

Yesterday I embarked on a very long journey from Medellín to Washington DC. It's a shock going to Medellín, but more of a shock coming back. This is my country, this is where I grew up, I blend in here, why do I have culture shock?? At least when I go to Medellín, the reasons are obvious.

First impressions:

1. The first one happened in the bathroom, as these things do.  Less clean, but with precauctions like toilet seat covers, soap dispensers that actually have soap in them and paper towel dispensers with paper towels. This may be a boring fact to most of you but after drying your hands on your pants for 5 months, you'd understand.

2. Before speaking I subconsciously plan how it goes in Spanish for a split second and then I realize it'll be in English and I'm disappointed because it's too easy.

3. I hear all the bitchy things people say. After security, I was putting my boots and scarf back on and some girl, dressed in flowy orange pants like a peacenick hippie, commented  "This is NOT the place to get dressed," and it made me so angry! If I had been in Colombia I would have not noticed or not cared because Spanish doesn't have the power to instantly penetrate like English does. It's a wonderful super power!!

4. And continuing on the subject of strangers here, people just generally look more like shit here. You would never see a nice looking girl wearing her pajamas in public in Medellín, like peace nick hippie bitch was. But this is a tired subject on this blog, so I will leave it at that.

Tonight we created a new and delicious cocktail, the Gringa Royale.

Ingredientes:

-spoon full of chopped up ripe mango

-2 caps full of triple sec

-champagne

-hint of gringa love

Put mango and triple sec in glass; mix. Fill rest of glass with Champagne. Have the nearest gringa eminate a little love in your direction. Now you have a Gringa Royale!!

 Pictured here are a few of the gringas of Medellin who get me through the day. Just thought y'all deserved a shout out!  huepa!

Paisas love to make plans and talk about all the awesome things we are going to do together. But over the years I have learned that it rarely goes beyond this.

At first this left me a little disappointed and perplexed all the time, sitting at home on my bed all dressed up, expectations of a fun evening dashed.Then I started to enjoy the freedom it allowed. We could dream together without the annoyance of being accountable for it. And then I started doing it myself. Oh sure, yes, I would love to go get that drink with you, try that restaurant, have that picnic, yes that sounds great!!  Call me!! And then you immediately forget and they don't call and that is that.

The only problem is that once in a while I really am looking forward to a plan. I plan my day around it, dress accordingly, and then I wait. I text, no answer. I call, no answer. And then about 15 minutes later I get that dreaded call back. "Hola Jenni." they say. Uh oh. I hear it in their voice. They said my name. Then they say it again "Jenni, um it's that I forgot that I have a family lunch today or I have to bathe my dogs or I have to dye my eyelashes...." It doesn't have to be a good excuse, and often it doesn't make sense, but that is that, there is no negotiating. You fell into the trap of forgetting that a plan is not really a plan until you are sitting in front of that person actually doing your plan!!

So then, how do you make plans with a Paisa?  Well, to be honest I'm still not sure. I use various strategies with varying success. One is to make friends with some of the few non flaky ones. My roommate is very reliable and that is wonderful. But she is the only one I know. Another option is to make a bunch of plans with different people for the same time and increase the odds that someone will follow through. Or you can hound the person daily for a week leading up to the plan. But that still is no guarantee and who really wants to do that anyway.

I just got back from attending a really bad conference in Guayaquil, Ecuador. It was my first trip to another South American Spanish-speaking country and I'm trying not to take my frustations about the conference out on Guayaquil, but it was like someone plopped Newark, NJ via 1963 beside a river in the tropics. Everything was falling apart, my "fancy" hotel had mold growing on the walls, the people were constantly trying to rip me off in idiodic ways, and it was expensive. It made me realize I'm spoiled by Medellin.

One nice thing though was my hotel was in front of a park called el parque de las iguanas and it was packed with domesticated iguanas that would eat lettuce out of your hand.  One I night went there and couldn't find any iguanas and then I looked up and the tree above me was packed full of iguanas sleeping on every branch.

So anyway, back to the worst conference ever. It was at a place called the centro civico (below), which wasn't terrible, aside from the fact that there were no chairs or benches anywhere, so everyone was splayed out on the floor.

The best part about the centro civico was that the park surrounding it was full of stray cats. During one of the breaks in the conference we got these disgusting spinach cheese things and so I fed mine to 4 stray cats. They loved it so much that they had a little fight over it, so cute!

There was also nowhere to eat lunch near the centro civico, so this lady from Chile tried to sneak me into the speaker lunch and the organizer of the event, Edgar Montalvo Mendoza, otherwise known as the ugliest man on the planet, literally shoved me backwards out the door to avoid that I ate lunch with them. At that point I was like F this sh*t and I hightailed it to the beach to burn the bejeezus out of my legs and drink pina coladas for the rest of the trip.

On Sunday while riding the metro, it happened yet again. A man standing next to my gringa friends and I began glancing at us. Then I noticed the dictionary in his hands. Oh shit. But then I noticed that his dictionary was Spanish-Portuguese!!  Hurray!!!

But then all hope was quickly erased as he looked up and said in stilted English, "where are you from?." I knew it was all over at that point, there was no escape.  I couldn't bear going through the interview again, and I found myself lying, saying I was from the UK, the northwest in fact. When he asked if I "liked the Colombian people" I deliberately gave him an answer that there was no way he would understand, something like "yes I find them absolutely positively mind baffling beyond all comparison awesome" as an attempt to deflect the question and highlight the ridiculousness of asking if I liked 47.7 million people .

I know it sounds mean. They're just trying to be nice. Or maybe they need to practice their English. But I'm sorry to say that I am only a gringa and I just can't take it anymore.

For four years I have been given the gringa interview by strangers on a daily basis. Here are the most common questions and what I have always wanted to say, but didn't:

Q1: Where am I from?

Well on Mondays I am from the UK and Tuesdays South Africa. On Wednesdays it's Australia and Thursdays it's Germany. Fridays are Holland and the weekends are a toss up between the Scandinavian countries.

Q2: What do I think of the Colombian people?

A: As stated above, the population of Colombia is 47.7 million people. Therefore, I am not able to form an opinion as of yet, but if I had to take a guess, I would say that they are people and like all people there are good ones and bad ones. Although I think what you expect me to say is that they are the most extraordinary race of human beings I have yet to come across.

Q3: Am I amañada (settled in)?

A: YES. After 4 years I believe I have managed to settle in.

Q4: Which language is harder to learn, Spanish or English?

A: Considering that English is my first language, I'd have to say hands down the more difficult language is Spanish.

Q5: Why are words in English spelled differently than pronounced?

A: Because it gives us magical powers.  Or maybe the answer is HOW THE HELL WOULD I KNOW. They just are.

Q6: Why do I talk weird in Spanish?

A: It's called an accent.  This is my second language. Yes, I speak two languages and for this I am going to speak one of them with a little accent because I am not an idiot savant. 

Q7: Isn't everyone in Medellin so friendly?

A: Hmmmm, not really. I mean, sometimes yes, sometimes no. Like everyone else in the world.

Q8: Did I come here to find a husband?

A: I'd say that is an absolutely positively without a doubt no.

  Q9: Do I like your country?

No, nothing happened. I'm not particular happy today. But the last time I looked at my blog, for a split second I thought it said Eulogy instead of Gringaology and I was like whooooooa. Hold the phone, I gotta get back on that gringa horse and turn it around, make it dance like Rafalca Romney

For the last three weeks, my creative juices got replaced by mourning juices. I stopped noticing things, became introspective. Of course, if I would have just carried on like normal, I would be a sociopath.

The other thing is that now it's been almost three months since I got here and I'm getting desensitized to the funny, odd, amusing things I see. Three months ago they slapped me in the face and now I'm just like "Oh, it's just a homeless crackhead sleeping on a pile of 6 trashbags in the middle of the sidewalk next to that man selling mangos."

And so, to kick things off, let's start with a couple fun things that happened this week.

1. My gym today sent me an email telling me that I've only gone twice this month. I sent them an email back saying my grandpa died and then I got the stomach flu and they can go F themselves.

2. My student decided to come out of the closet to me while counting kissing bug eggs in the insectarium. I have never felt so awkward. I dealt with the situation by asking him if he had ever seen the movie Footloose, not the remake, but the original.

3. A guy walking next to me went up to a homeless person sleeping on the street and kicked him. The homeless person woke up, did a little shake, and got up and walked away. Is that something I am allowed to do here? Walk up to people and kick them?  I really hope so.

4. Another homeless crackhead eating a chicken leg asked me for money and I smiled at him and kept walking. He spit the chewed chicken in his mouth at me and I caught it with my mouth and then threw a water balloon at him. (part of this story is fantasy, I won't tell you which).

5. I taught one of my Paisa friends all the slang words for pubic hair.  My favorite one was bush, because I got to say "like the president."

Last Wednesday I flew to Los Angeles for my Grandpa Jack's funeral. I was originally supposed to go the following Saturday before we knew that he would die so quickly. Grandpa had just gone into the hospital the Sunday before, so we thought he had at least a few weeks. But it turns out he had just 5 days. He got what he wanted though: he did not have to stay a long time in a hospital. He waited until he was at death's door to tell anyone that he was sick.

The strangest part is that I decided to call him 45 minutes before he died. My dad had sent me an email with the phone number of his hospice early in the week, encouraging me to call him and ask him if he was comfortable, but I was too scared to call. Then on Friday morning I received an email that grandpa's lung function had gone down and he was not doing well. I had woken up late that morning and was working from home and I thought you know what, I have the strength right now, I have the apartment to myself, I have to call.

My Uncle Greg answered the phone. He told me that Grandpa was doing really badly and not able to speak. Then there was an awkward silence where I thought he was going to hang up. But then he offered to put me on speaker phone so grandpa could hear me. I told him that I loved him and that he was a great grandpa and that I was coming to visit him in a week. I told him all the things that you should say regularly but don't.

I asked to talk to my aunt Sandy, the chattiest of the bunch, to get the real scoop on what was happening. She told me that they were hoping that grandpa would hold on long enough for my dad to get there that evening- he was flying in from Portland. I started to cry and told her I was coming the next week and she put the phone to granpa's ear again and told me to tell him again that I loved him. She said she knew he heard me because he squeezed her hand. I was still crying and she abruptly got off the phone.

Grandpa died 45 minutes later. My dad was on the airplane and when he landed he received the news in a text message from his brother. He called me from his stop over in Las Vegas and I tried to make a joke, asking him if he had decided to forget about grampa and go to Vegas instead. He didn't laugh at the joke, instead he told me that grandpa had died and then got off the phone.

  My grandpa had a military funeral because he had served honorably in World War II. He had an American flag on his coffin and two honor guards performed a ceremony. My dad, his three brothers, and my two cousins carried the coffin. They all wore one of the shirts that my granpa always wore (he had 100 of the same), one of his hats and one of the belts he made. You can see the belts peaking out from a couple of my uncle's shirts. It was eerie because from the back, they all looked like my grandpa. Especially my Uncle Greg, who is at the front left.

After they carried the coffin, one of the honor guards played taps. It was a recording played out of an audio player hidden inside a trumpet and it was the saddest song I ever heard.

My dad gave a great speech and then he asked me to read what I wrote on this blog about grandpa. At first it was hard to speak out loud without crying but after the first few lines it got easier. It got some laughs and some tears. Every emotion felt magnified. The laughs felt so good and the tears felt so sad, like a needle that went straight to the purest form of the emotion.

The reverend or pastor or whatever he was got Jesus-y on us and I rolled my eyes at Simon. He whispered to me that it was what my grandpa wanted and he was probably right. Although I am not 100% convinced because he never spoke about religion or raised his kids with religion. He seemed too smart to believe all that stuff.

Today at 11:48am my Grandpa Jack passed away.

Grandpa Jack was my favorite grandpa. He had an infectious smile and when I think of him, that is what I see: his infectious smile and his bright eyes gleaming at me behind old timey glasses.

He was a staunch conservative, so I made sure never to talk about politics around him. I remember one time when I was little he blew up at my dad for asking if Ronald Reagan dyed his hair.

I liked to hear about his stories of when he was sent to the Japan at the age of 16 to be in the front lines of WWII. He was sent on a 30 day ship ride, where they had one meal a day and then once in a while they would be given an ice cream, for which the lines circled all around the boat. Luckily, the war ended before he got there and so instead he spent his time putting up telephone lines. There is a great picture of him as a little shirtless, skinny 17 year old, hanging off the side of a Japonese telephone pole.

He was very creative. He used to do leather work, making belts with pretty designs that could sell for a lot of money at Urban Outfitters these days. He loved to take photographs and they were hung all around his house. He was a devoted husband of over 50 years to my Grandma Ginger, who passed away about ten years ago. He never got over her death and when she went away, his life was limited to keeping up the house and once in a while going to the race track or the casino.

He was so stubborn and would never accept help for anything, including his own health. When Grandma Ginger died there was no one left to force him to go to the doctor. After she died grandpa didn't really care about living any more and I always wanted to brighten his life, but I wasn't sure how. I went to his house every Christmas eve, the only time when the family all gets together, because we all live far away. He lived in California, I live in Colombia but also New Jersey. Therefore, I always tried to come for Christmas Eve in case it was our last. He seemed healthy enough, but every year he looked a bit more tired, although it was a subject we never spoke about.

Grandpa Jack was wise. When I was living in New York and I couldn't find a good guy, he told me I needed to leave New York. When I finally left New York a few years later, I met my husband within the first three weeks. When I was in undergrad at Rutgers studying theater, Grandpa told me that I should be a writer, not an actress. So, Grandpa this is for you. I am finally writing now, like you told me I should. I hope that you will watch over me and somehow continue to send your indespensible wisdom, warm smiles and fiesty energy.

Enough of rosaries in our ovaries.

I imagine that from a Colombian point of view, gringa music is slow songs sung by thin girly voices accompanied by an acoustic guitar or piano. And it’s true. But not the whole truth. I like Christina Perri, Lily Allen, Ingrid Michaelson, among others, but I also like a song I can shake it to or rap music that makes me feel really tough.

I should also add that Gringas like Latin pop music, generally the songs that everyone who speaks Spanish as their first language cannot tolerate. Except for Juanes, because he is rock, not pop (even though he sounds pretty poppy to me....). But for us, these songs are fantastic and they teach us many Spanish vocabulary words. Thanks to Latin pop, before I could even say the books are on the table, I had already learned how to tell someone that I'm so sorry for cheating, but that now here I am with a beso burning my lips for them if they would just leave that witch, that old worn out piece of leather they left me for and come back to me where I am drowning among photos and notebooks and things and memories that I can't understand.

There are a few simple rules for riding the bus in Medellin. These rules are not posted anywhere, will vary by bus and must be learned from experience. The first thing to notice is the number of doors on the bus. If a bus has one door, it is called a buseta. On a buseta, you generally pay on the way out and the cost will be 100 pesos more than if the bus has two doors, because it theoretically gets you there faster (not true!!). In a two-door bus, you pay on the way in so you don't sneak out the back door without paying.

The other rule is unspoken and it took me a while to realize that all the young guys on the bus either rode hanging out the front door, or if they did pass the turnstile, they avoided turning it.This happens by them giant-stepping over it, squeezing through it or cartwheeling over it like a professional gymnast. (Okay, one of those methods I made up.) Sometimes the old men do it too, which can be mildly entertaining. What finally clued me in was the one time a guy tried to do it and the driver told him he couldn't because there were cameras on the bus. I asked my friend about this and he explained to me that if you don't turn the turnstile, then the rider isn't regstered and all the money goes into the driver's pocket. If you do turn the turnstile, then the driver gets only a portion of your fare and the rest goes to the bus owner. Therefore, the non-turners pay 1000 pesos while the rest of us pay 1700-1900 pesos. The funny thing is that I have never seen a woman do this trick. I am tempted to do it, but I imagine they would make me pay the full price anyway.