Jaime

Today I was doing my usual observing in the hospital when something odd happened. We were in the middle of examining a patient — the attending was standing on one side of the bed and I was standing on the other. He removed the oxygen mask from the patient and asked me to put it in a secure place — "Jaime," he said, "pone la mascarita ahi." Considering that I'm still not understanding the majority of the Spanish I hear, I thought maybe he had said something else and ignored the possible equivocation. In the next patient's room, he called me Jaime once again. I was about 50% sure at this point. During a lecture on cardiac insufficiency in the afternoon, the same thing happened a third time — this time I was positive, so I corrected him. Needless to say, laughter ensued. One resident laughed for no joke two minutes straight. It was pretty funny...

I thought he felt a little bad, so I attempted to make him feel better by telling him that my hebrew name is Chaim, so really he wasn't that far off. Though calling a jew chaimie might be considered racist. Anyway, I like this doctor a lot so it's all good.

Samwell

Perhaps the most intelligent thing I've done so far in Buenos Aires is use my full name: Samuel, pronounced Samwell in Castellano. First of all, I like the way that name sounds. Second of all, Sam would sound rather feo in Castellano — it's too short and would not even be able to compete with the multi-syllabic beauty of other male names here such as Javier, Ignacio, and Fernando. Finally, when people are speaking quickly, having an extra syllable in my name gives me a second chance to respond when someone addresses me. Sam is easy to miss, but Samwell is unmissable!

Pimped

Today I was pimped in the ICU. It was undoubtedly my worst performance ever as a pimpee. During this session, I guessed wrong so many times that toward the end, I was convinced that no matter what I guessed, it would be wrong — which it was. No language barrier could explain how poorly I performed. My performance was so poor that, afterwards, when I had to meet with the director of students at the medical school to discuss changes in my schedule, I feared that I was going to be expelled. Fortunately I wasn't. Oh, additionally, my resident, who I think is cute, was laughing at how bad my performance was. I couldn't fault her because I would have definitely done the same if I were in her position. I'm not gonna lie, I almost started laughing because I was doing so badly.

Good times. At least I killed the boards last month— that confidence boost should at least get me through the end of August. Guess I won't have to start succeeding until then. Dale...

Yanqui

I've learned to be comfortable in my role as the Yanqui or Gringo — I go by either here. I'm not gonna lie, it sucks... It's very for me to be embarrased because I don't know what's going on half the time. And I'm not a hard-ass or anything — I like for people to have fun, even if it is at my expense — which it pretty much has been for the past few weeks. The nurses at the hospital in particular have taken it upon themselves to make me feel welcome by joking "with" me and not sparing any sass.

One of the first days I was at the hospital, one of the nurses asked me if I knew what the word cachucha meant. I didn't, but continued to loudly ask the nursing staff what it was. Once they started laughing, I realized what it was — vagina, pronounced baheena (btw, Georgia, the country is pronounced Heorhia — trippy) Anway, I still wanted confirmation that the meaning was in fact vagina, so I kept on asking.

Anytime I saw this one nurse for the next few weeks — she's still doing it now — screams the word cachucha at me whenever she sees me. Laughing ensues for all people within earshot of the greeting.

Then today, one of the nurses told me that the nursing staff all felt that I had a nice pompino, which she explained to me involved the gluteos. I was pleased, I suppose. They all had a good laugh...

One strange thing about the buses here is that they don't always take the same route. Today, my colectivo was in a big jam, moving about 100 meters in 10 minutes. So it took a turn and bypassed the jam. Cool.

Mierda

One thing which I'm probably never going to get used to here is the inadequacy of the toilets. After taking a shit, it is necessary to look down at the bowl post-flush to evaluate whether or not there is a residual stain on the bowl. If there is a stain, which there almost always is, you have to clean it out. This entails getting some tp and scrubbing the crap off the bowl. If you’re going to do a good job, you have to go pretty deep into the bowl and the tips of your fingers inevitably become wet with toilet water. Not really sure why they haven’t designed better toilet bowls. Ok, that was pretty disgusting. Sorry.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve picked up on a few key words here in Argentina. These words are of equal importance to the phrases “like” and “you know” in the US. It is crucial to know these phrases because they often frame sentences or indicate a subtle sentiment.

Dale, pronounced dahlay- literally mean give it to him. It is used most often in two ways: (1) let’s go and (2) okay.

A ver, pronounced habayer- literally means to see. It is used for the phrase “let’s see” which I never realized is said so frequently.

Digamos, same pronunciation- literally means we say, which is also how it is used. It is used frequently as an interrupter when you’re explaining a concept and are looking for the words to describe something — a word to say during a pause.