Cultural exchange

*The pictures are from a friend, arent´t they cool?

Every expat/tourist/traveller/martian/whatever is interested in having an authentic cultural exchange with the locals of the visited place, right?. That´s healthy and smart and makes you feel that you are immersed in the new culture, and not just taking advantage of the devalued currency (or whatever you could take advantage of)

However, some people don´t understand the meaning of cultural exchange. well is not that I have a phd in cultural exchange or anything, but I do know that copying is not an exchange, is thievery, is fake. And you don´t want to be a phony, right? (well maybe you do, in that case just wait till I write the "Faking porteños for dummies guide").

It´s ok to not fit perfectly in a different culture, after all you don´t have to, it´s almost impossible. You can try to be polite, respect their rules, but you cannot pretend that you know exactly how everything works and think that you´ve learned everything and you have graduated from the expat in Buenos Aires school.

Probably you´ll find that a lot of our rules and habits are great but others are annoying and make no sense. That´s normal. What you cannot do is to use the rules for your convenience. Oh, you don´t understand what I´m saying? let me clarify with some examples:

The kissing rule

When you got here you were surprised by the huge amount of kissing. We kiss to say hello, we kiss to say goodbye, we kiss all the time. First time you saw that you were like "wow, I´m going to kiss all the pretty girls" or something like tat. Yes sure, kiss all the pretty girls, but if you decided to adopt this "rule" you have to kiss the guys too!!! So prepare those lips, use balm, maybe a little lip gloss and kiss till your lips sore.

Not tipping

You met some really "smart " porteños that told you something like "this is just a bar, we don´t need to tip" or "the waiter won´t even care, they are used to not receiving tips", and following their wise advise you start to tip less or not tip at all. Look, this only proves that you are a cheapskate, not that you are immersed in this culture. So next time think twice before having some lame excuse to avoid the tipping part. That leads me to the next bad habit hat some foreigners "catch" from us.

Giving excuses

We are masters in this area in particular. I think that we could won the olympic games for this discipline that unfortunately is not official yet. We have been practicing this sports since we were in elementary school. We know exactly what to say in every occasion and we don´t feel guilty by making the worst lies ever. Even telling that you mother or father died is fair in this dirty game. You, on the other hand, have no clue about how this works. So if you don´t show up at some place at a certain time and when you apologize you say something like "there was a traffic jam" all the porteños in the room will simply hate you. For us , inventing excuses is a fine art, so if you are going to lie, at least put some energy in telling an amazing story that makes us laugh, or that makes us feel your pain (fake pain of course).

So that´s it. I have to go. I have to keep working for the wellness of the human race.