When is a Chino not a person from China?

I found a Chino in my neighborhood yesterday. A "Chino" is a Chinese-run supermarket. The other day when I was walking home from the disco with my two bags of groceries, a guy on a bicycle stopped and asked me if there was a chino nearby. Fortunately, Marcela had clued us in on the different kinds of supermarkets in Buenos Aires, or I would have been really confused. He also asked me if there was a "Koreano" - they are Korean-run. According to our sources, they are good places to buy anything but milk products. Rumor has it that their costs are low and therefore their prices are low, because at night they unplug all of the refrigerators (and therefore anything that is refrigerated would be a risky purchase).

To be honest, I wasn't looking for a Chino. I was on my way to Gallerias Pacifico, a shopping center that is not too far from here that has a Freddo ice cream place. I had a nice dinner of a salad and a provoleta that I made myself and was delicious. Provoleta is one of my favorite things here. They take a hunk of provolone cheese and throw it on the grill. Then they put olive oil, oregano and whatever you order - sundried tomatoes, basil, etc. The cheese gets crispy on the outside and gooey inside. It's really great. I had this provolone cheese that I bought but didn't like eating it just all cold and hard, so I decided to try to make a provoleta and threw a piece in a frying pan. To my surprise, when I flipped it, rather than being melted, the outside was brown and crispy. I was out of olive oil and didn't have anything else to put on it, so I ate it plain, but it was still good.

Anyway, after dinner, I needed some ice cream to get the taste of salad out of my mouth and walked to Gallerias Pacifico to get some Freddo. I thought I'd also walk around and window shop. This was about 9:00 last night. When I was walking down Suipacha, I noticed this supermarket that I thought was a Chino. I was going to go in but didn't want to have to carry groceries to Freddo. So I went to Freddo first.

The last time I was at Freddo the guy at the cashier who has twice asked me where I'm from, asked me if I had a Freddo card. I told him I didn't, but I wanted to get one. I think I get points each time I buy something and then get a free ice cream. Hey, I'm going to be here two months, those Freddos are going to add up!

So I filled out this form and he gave me a little card that I put in my wallet. It tells me that I get two for one on Mondays.

So yesterday, he was not there. The other cashier didn't ask me where I was from, but did ask me if I have a Freddo card. I told him I did and showed it to him. He asked me for the number of my document. I didn't think that this was a very formal way to ask me for the number on the card that I showed him, but went ahead and read the number to him. I read the numbers and he wanted more - so I said freddo - because that was what was written after the number.

Turned out he wanted my passport number!

They use passport numbers here to verify everything. It's even on my student ID. Anytime you pay with a credit card, there are two lines, one for your signature and one for your passport number. This is for everyone, not just tourists.

So anyway, after much explanation, I finally got what he was asking for. Giving my passport number is really giving me a lot of practice with numbers in Spanish! I'm also sure I will have this new passport number memorized by the time I leave here.

I walked around the mall a little, but the stores were closed. So, I decided to head back to the Chino and see if I could get olive oil and maybe some sundried tomatoes for my other piece of provolone in the refrigerator. Just as I got there, they were pulling down the metal gate. I'll have to do the Chino another day.

So, when is a Chino not a person from China?
When it's a supermarket.

Yesterday's class was better with Fernanda. Mike didn't come to school. He texted me and told me it was a beautiful day so he was going to MALBA - the Museum of Latin American Art. Anna called me and told me she was going to be late, but she didn't show up. So it was just me, Jonathan and Cynthia.

Fernanda was still a little bit of a feather in the wind, but she also wrote some sentences on the board while we were discussing whatever topic arose. It turned out those sentences were her plan for the day. They were more ways to say, "even though ...." I can see now as a student, that teaching students 10 different ways to say the same thing is really difficult, and it ends up confusing the mind. I think it is impossible for a normal brain to absorb all of that. Even though she put all of these sentences on the board and it was a bit confusing, I tried to focus on just a few of them, and we actually discussed just a few. I felt like I learned something.

After our break, she brought in a comic strip called "Mafalda". I had seen Mafalda in the bookstores and on things like notebooks, etc., but I didn't know anything about her. I liked the comic and it was a really great way to see some new vocabulary in context. One of the words was "papelon" - Hernan taught me this word. A papelon is a person who embarrases us. He told me that the woman at Las Lilas who was speaking so loud in English that the whole room could hear her was a papelon for us. So it was great to see this word, recognize it, and be able to see it in a different context.

The context was that Mafalda's little brother Guille, went to the park with his mother. A woman was sitting on a bench and said, "oh nino, would you like a cookie?" - she took a cookie out of the pack she had. Guille took the cookie and his mother said, "what do you say to the lady?" -his response, "stingy!"

When they got home, his mother said he was a papelon for her, but Mafalda said, "if she had a whole box of cookies and only gave him one it was like asking a vampire in front of a fat person to drink as if he were a mosquito"

The whole thing was very cute, and it was a really good way to practice our grammatical structures (which were otherwise boring).

So that was my day yesterday. Nothing terribly interesting, but it was still a fun day. The weather was beautiful, the sky was blue and the air seemed fresh after the rains on Wednesday.

Today is raining again, but that's ok, it looks like it will be a nice weekend.