Rosario, Argentina: Not in Kansas anymore

Action
There’s some bad hair here in Argentina. A surprising number of young men have rat-tails and timid mohawks. The women’s hair looks a bit better if monotonous. All the women have long hair, and many of them have interesting layers and dramatic bangs that reach to their eyebrows.

Besides hairstyles, there are other differences between the US and Argentina that we notice in our daily life. As we’ve noticed elsewhere in Latin America, people often drive at night with their lights off. The streets are well lit, but as a pedestrian, discerning an oncoming car can be difficult at times. Cars with their lights off do tend to flash their lights as they approach intersections to improve their visibility. One explanation offered to us is that cars drive with their lights off, so that they are even more visible when they flash their lights at intersections.

There are also times when I’ve been taken aback by differences more profound than hair and driving styles. A couple of weeks ago, I attended a class on Latin American literature at the National University of Rosario. Halfway through the class, I noticed the smell of mate wafting through the air and turned around to see the row of students behind me sharing a gourd. I shook my head indulgently. A few minutes later, a student sitting next to the door lit a cigarette. The professor began smoking as well. Before long, I was in a classroom full of smokers. I’m accustomed to being surrounded by cigarette smoke here, and seeing mate everywhere, so I wasn’t too shocked by the scene in the classroom at that point.

About an hour into the hour-and-half-long afternoon class, a man came in through the door in the back of the classroom. He had a large bag slung over his shoulder, in which were 4 thermoses, 2 plastic squeeze-bottles, and one shaker filled with a powdery substance. When he entered the room, several people in the back began ordering coffee, cappuccino and hot chocolate. He prepared all the drinks with his thermoses of hot water and coffee and ketchup bottles of cream, pouring them into the plastic cups he was carrying. I was stunned and a little offended. This was a classroom, not a stadium! I looked to the professor to see if he was as indignant as I was. He didn’t seem the slightest bit perturbed. Then the salesman proceeded to the front of the room preparing more beverages and collecting coins as payment. At this point, the classroom felt like the stage of an absurdist piece of theatre and I tried to suppress a laugh. I wanted to make eye-contact with someone so we could share a chuckle or at least a smile about the silliness of it all but everyone was rapped up in the discussion of literary responses to the vanguard movement and sipping their piping-hot drinks.

Reflection
Living in Argentina at times isn’t all that different from living in the US. People speak a different language, but because most people we see in Rosario have European ancestry, they look like white Americans. Their haircuts and fashions are a bit different, but probably just as different as mid-west styles look to a New Yorker. The logic of the drivers is quirky, but not outrageously different. Every once in a while, though, something happens to remind me that I really am thousands of miles away from the country I grew up and in an entirely different hemisphere. Or as Dorothy said when she entered the land of Oz, “Gee, Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” Watching a coffee vendor enter the university classroom was such a moment. It wasn’t just that the situation struck me as absurd; silly things happen in the US too. What struck me was also that no one else thought it was absurd. Being in a foreign environment is most alienating when it’s clearly not foreign to anyone else who’s around you.

Question
When have you realized that you’re “not in Kansas anymore”?