Move aside Cesar Millan, there’s a new hispanic accent in town

Taken from About.com

“…the basic rule of Spanish names is fairly simple: In general, a person born into a Spanish-speaking family is given a first name followed by two surnames, the first being the father’s family name (or, more precisely, the surname he gained from his father) followed by the mother’s family name (or, again more precisely, the surname she gained from her father)…”

Also it is very common (specially in Latin American countries) for there to be 2 names in a Spanish first name.

This article on wikipedia correctly states that what i refer to here as “middle name” is actually part of the “first name”. I have only used the “middle name” convention to make it easy to understand for English speakers. In reality there is no such thing as “middle name” in Spanish names, just compound names.

During this dinner party, and as if we hadn’t had met enough people we wouldn’t really see again, we were introduced to each other’s other friends, a sort of Logical Disjunction of our friendship circles. One of such acquaintances was yet another American girl named Elizabeth who after the ‘where are you from/what are you doing here’ chats had been done with, begun to speak out vividly. Her Spanish was broken and sounded like a drunk sailor but her spirit and peculiar choice of words made all other conversations halt to focus on her stories about being a dancer, about her experience studying in the UBA, about getting lost in what she called the ‘street porteño scene’ and how she loved every minute of it.

Men present were smitten with her, their attention focused as she continued to deal with different conversations at once. Someone please tell them where is the lid to remove the batteries off this chatter box. Someone find the turn the off switch. So much for latin lovers and dramatic chamullo porteño. The other girls tried to steal the conversation away a few times but gave up after a number of failed attempts. Those with boyfriends present leashed their men and made their exit.

Most comfortable seat in the house. The wheels are stuck enough so I don’t roll down the hallways as the train accelerates or brakes abruptly.

I bought the chair 3 years ago when I first arrived. I gave it away to a friend 6 months later, the first time I tried to leave town. Yesterday night over dinner, drinking games and talk of goodbyes I gazed upon my chair again and thought it fit returning to me. My friend has no use for it anymore. She is too attempting to escape the Porteño gravitational pull.

The train pulled in at the train station after Belgrano Barracas and I lifted the chair over my head and walked down Libertador.

Pedestrians watched an upside down chair with human legs hybrid being.

Good working chair, feels like I sit on a cloud and the cloud is inside a cave, a cave where I type and type.

Literally translated it means “Muscled” and it refers to what is better known in the English speaking world as the “Wife beater” or “Tank top”.

The tyranny of this slang term… it makes me believe that perhaps for Argentines sporting short sleeves in the summer carries big expectations for the wearer.

Colombians call this style “Esqueleto” (Skeleton shirt) a much more forgiving term which takes off the pressure about having skinny arms and being too hot for sleeves.

We put together a small remake of the Assassination of the presidential candidate we saw on Tv, we used watered down ketchup for blood effects. We pretend-assassinated my friend Ricardo.

When I told my father about the play He said I should have picked something else, we should have done “a clown show or something”

It’s a friday in Bogotá and it’s 1990: Make the kids wear their special “gala” uniform, make them stand in military formation (organized by shortest kid to tallest kid) , have them sing the Colombian Anthem and the Army anthem, have them recite the oath to the flag, the oath ends some like this “Y llegado el caso morir por defenderte!” (should the case arise, die to defend you)