Saturday, April 04, 2009

No Entiendo

Last night after sharing a few chunks of bife de lomo, a bottle of wine, and several (read: about 10) litres of beer with a couple of new friends from school, we hopped in a cab in San Telmo to get back to our neighbourhood. Full of liquid courage, I decided to try to carry on a conversation with the taxista (driver). At first it was going OK - he asked where we were from, and told us about a few places he's been in the States. He spoke very quickly and I was having some trouble hearing him from the backseat, so at one point I asked him to speak more slowly so I could understand.

The taxista said 2 or 3 words at a slower pace then sped right back up. I listened as intently as I could (it wasn't easy, being both meat- and beer-drunk) and mostly tried to pick out words that were important for me to my end of the conversation, like "dónde" or "por qué." Ken & I took turns participating in the conversation, because I really didn't understand most of it, and saying, "No entiendo" ("I don't understand") over and over gets old fast. I guess it didn't go too badly because by the time we were back in Palermo the driver (Hugo) was playing his favourite tango CDs for us and even gave us his business card so that we could email him if we had any questions about Buenos Aires.

At least, I think that's why he gave it to us.

1 comment:

Adam Wishneusky said...

now that the initial crime is out of the way, it sounds like you're finding that you're in a very friendly city! :)