guiñar - to wink
gruñir - to growl. The most adorable story I've ever read - where I learned this word - is one by Cortázar called "El discurso del oso." It's about a page long and I kind of want to illustrate it and read it to small children.
cafishear - 'hmm, that one has an interesting ring to it,' I thought. Guess what it means? 'To pimp.'
vanagloriarse - okay, this may not actually entertain anyone else in the world, but you guys. It's 'vainglorious.' AS A VERB. A REFLEXIVE verb! That definitely warrants caps.
And some lunfardo (slang):
¡Que lio! What a mess!
¡Que bárbaro! Literally, "How barbaric!" (which I quite like) but they use it for both "how awful!" and "cool!"
Che - yup, that Argentine thing (as you know, that's where Che Guevara's nickname comes from). Means: yo, hey you, man, buddy... everyone's che.
A few days after the Bicentenario, I witnessed two men fighting each other on the street - serious fighting; one of them actually picked up a loose paving stone and ran after the other with it - and I heard this rather upright older man go, "¡Que loca mierda!" in amazement. I'll let you translate that one yourself.
There's the Congreso building (where my Subte stop is) lit up all pretty for the Bicentenario!
When I woke up yesterday morning I discovered that my heater wouldn't turn on. I wasn't all that surprised, because the electricity in my room is sometimes so sketchy that my lights flicker when I plug my computer in.
I then discovered, however, that the power outage covered not only in my room, or the building, but an enormous chunk of the neighborhood - when I looked of the balcony that night a disturbingly large swathe of buildings was pitch-black. The Subte was working; the traffic lights weren't - which made crossing Rivadavia something of an adventure. I would have had to climb down and up ten flights of stairs in complete blackness (aside from the occasional candle on the landing) if I hadn't found my flashlight at the bottom of a drawer. It was shocking how normally people carried on with their day; when I came home in the evening many businesses were still open - just darker than usual.
According to my host mother, cortos this long (it lasted about 20 hours in all) are not usual. I guess they're common enough, though, that people have a tradition of taking to the streets with casserole pots and cooking spoons and creating a ruckus in protest. They call these caserolazos, and my host mother was quite happy to lean out the window and join in.
Apparently this all started only in 2001, when the utility outages were so bad that several people died, and the caserolazos marched all the way to the Casa Rosada and caused the resignation of President de la Rua. As you do. (It should be mentioned that during that whole mess they were going through presidents like I go through episodes of Glee - one a day, or something).
I think I'm finally assimilating (some). My tongue is scarred from drinking mate; I don't even blink when the Subte announces it's having a tantrum today, and just hop on a bus; I understand not just the rapid-fire spanish but much of the lunfardo - more often than not, that is, which is something. Crossing the street like a porteño (or maybe just a city person, how would I know) has become so automatic that the other day I accidentally crossed a street in the wrong direction just because the walk light turned on as I went by. I also reached for a word while talking to a fellow American - in English - and the only one that came up was Spanish. Progress!
And because I really have to go work on my monografía now, I leave you with another picture of Jujuy:
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