My First Intercambio (are you eating my hair?)

After wandering around lost and confused for 15 minutes last night, I finally arrived at Plaza de Carmen and met a guy named Javier who I will be doing an intercambio with for the next 2 weeks or so. An intercambio is essentially two people meeting up who would like to learn one another’s language. To be quite honest, I didn’t know how academic it was going to be, but I figured my program director would not set me up with a weirdo, and thankfully she didn’t. Javier is 28 and going to Madrid in a month to get his masters in project management, and he works in the architecture field. We got some tapas at a near by bar that were very delicious and made me realize that the places I have been going are sub par, which is an advantage to meeting up with a local, and a disadvantage that I am still a gringo and don't know where the good spots are. The intercambio experience is nice because you get to see what issues Spanish people have with speaking English. For instance, Javier has trouble saying “taught” and he instead says “touched” which seems like a harmless error. But we had a good laugh over the fact that it may translate into “I touched young kids for a few months.” Seriously, so funny. He also “touched” me some good phrases such as

Tengo una papa en lo alto = Literally: I have a potato on my head, traslation in Spain = I’m Tipsy

Me estas tomando mi pelo? = Literally : you are eating my hair? Trans: “are you kidding me?”

Both are very useful and interesting in the fact that they literally translate into ridiculous phrases, a reminder that you can’t think in English when trying t speak Spanish. Javier and I will hopefully get 30 min. of conversation every night, speed man-dating if you will. I’m excited to learn a lot more useful things and have lots of good insider info in the days to come!