Observaciones Más Intangibles

I apologize to my readers if this post is a little less polished than usual, and wish the best to my editor.

Having a maid is weird—it is weird to me not only that her job obligates her to enter my room freely and touch all my things and do stuff like wash my underwear, but also just the idea that someone is so openly acknowledged to be of lower class, I guess. There is no reason that she has earned my respect any less than her employers have, and if anything she is the one who does everything so I feel like I should respect her more.

The distinction in verbal conjugations between you formal and informal exacerbates my distress, by emphasizing that I am speaking to her as though she were beneath me, using the familiar form with her knowing full well that she will use the formal tense with me. I hate the formal tense. I accept using the formal tense with people who are older—that is a good rule—and I understand for example, when I use the formal conjugation to address the musicians and they use the informal conjugation to address me, because I am just the dumb intern whereas they have earned my respect through their musical prowess or whatever. But with the housekeeper, who is older than I, it is just silly because I have done nothing to earn her respect and honestly she has earned my respect plenty--only after passing a few hours in the kitchen making empanadas with her when she began to call me 'tu' did I feel as though I had truly earned her respect.

Half the time when I am trying to figure out whether to use the formal or informal form to address someone I wait and see how they address me—but then I realize that just because they address you one way or another doesn’t mean that that is how you should address them, but that would just make so much more sense—why should you respect someone more than they respect you?

On the other hand, I feel like that the fact that everyone here knows when and how to use the two tenses, and also that every person with way less education than I have been fortunate enough to receive can perfectly execute the subjunctive and understands it on a deeply fundamental level is a kind of intelligence that we in the United States have not been raised to possess.

A phenomenon that I do find awesome is that all of the musicians call each other Maestro. It is quite common that people call each other based on their position of work: abogado, economista, asocio, qualquier cosa. But it is totally rad that all of the musicians running around calling each other Maestro, and all of the administrators call the musicians and each other Maestro as well. This must have positive effects on their psyches.

The orquestra is super diverse, with people from all over South America, Europe, Russia, and North America—the director is from Armenia (his count-offs are funny: un, dos, tres, qvattro)—and it is crazy that they are all here speaking Spanish! Half the time even when I meet someone from the US or another English-speaking country we still speak in Spanish!

The ages of the musicians vary a lot too: there are people in their late teens, a solid contingent of 20-somethings, lots 30 and 40 year old ish people, probably a few that are like 50 or 60, and one violinist who is over 80! What! And so everyone just sees you as a musician and not a foreigner or a youngun or anything, which is both terrifying and liberating—I am used to being treated like a student, where people cut you some slack, which is nice, but they also expect less of you.

It is not considered impolite to ask someone how old they are, or for everyone (including men) to discuss womanly issues ¬with anyone. It doesn’t bother me, but it still surprises me every time. It is also always the youngest ones who tell me that I am jovencita: someone will ask my age, and I will respond, ‘twenty-one,’ they are like ‘oh my god I am so old’ and I am like really how old are you? And they respond, ‘twenty-three.’

In addition, there are like 9 pregnant women in the orchestra, which I find pretty remarkable. It is super interesting the way they treat women, because on the one hand they definitely have plenty of preconceptions about the strength and physical abilities of a woman (which I do my best to challenge), and all of the women of the older generation do lots of cooking and don’t work (which is another reason that it is weird to have a maid, because if the maid does all the household work than the woman literally has nothing to do; bueno, retired old men also don’t have that many obligations) but on the other hand, there are tons of women in the orchestra and nobody thinks at all that they might be inferior to the men. The women are pretty evenly distributed throughout the instruments: while the first violin and viola are both men, the first cello is a woman, and the tiniest girl in the orchestra plays timpani and cymbals, and no one says a word about how it might be strange for a woman to be playing these instruments.

In general, they are much more accepting about physical characteristics that are obvious. For example if someone is Chinese, it is very common to refer to them as ‘chino’—there are no negative or otherwise connotations associated with this, it is just a manner of describing people. They also are very upfront about calling someone gordo—telling them that they are gordo or that they look gordo. And if someone is like ‘oh man I look so fat’ rather than being like, no don’t worry you look great they are like, it's okay, you just had a baby.

Everyone is obsessed with soccer, and have soccer paraphernalia in their cars and EVERYWHERE. All of the staff at the Orquestra wear polos embroidered with the OSG logo, but then a bunch of them also have the shield for their soccer team (the most popular one is Barcelona, which is yellow, and a lot of them wear bright yellow polos for this reason) embroidered there right next to the official logo, which at first I thought was part of the official uniform. But it is not.

No one can type! They all type with like one finger on each hand, and also the keyboards are a little bit different to make it easier to do accents and whatnot, and sometimes when I try to type things I end up opening six programs and doing things that I do not mean to do. And for the life of me I cannot figure out how to make the @ sign. If I haven't emailed you, now you know why.

I am pretty sure it is not the law to wear seat belts in the back because no one does and half the cars don’t even have them.
Also sometimes when you park your car you leave it in neutral and then these randos on the street (because there are always randos on the street that sit there and watch your car and then when you drive away you are supposed to give them a small tip) push the cars around so that it is easier for the next person to park/ more cars can fit. So then you are just walking down the street and there is a dude pushing the cars around and you are like WHAT.