My day: Waiting to eat meat, eating meat, digesting meat

May 25

Today is el 25 de Mayo, a national holiday commemorating the start of the revolution for independence from Spain in the 1800s. And since it’s a holiday, that means no classes and no requirements!

But we got an early start anyway, leaving the house with Facu and his cousin Tatiana at 8:30. We took a bus to meet Facu’s father (his parents are divorced). With Guillermo, we hopped on another bus. Nearly an hour after we started, we arrived on the other side of the city and went food shopping. We bought pounds of food – most of it meat. After meeting up with Facu’s father’s second ex-wife Laura and her three-year-old daughter Natalia and their nanny Marta (my head was spinning, too), we all piled into a VW Golf and went to the club.

The club is basically a private park in a corner of the city. It’s very sporty – several artificial turf fields, swimming pool, tennis courts, floor hockey rink, etc, etc. But we were there to eat.

Un asado is an Argentine roast. Basically you get lots of meat from all sorts of different parts of a cow (ribs, shank, brisket, steak, tail, innards, etc.) and then slow cook it over an outdoor fire. It’s delicious and very filling.

Last night when I was invited the join this side of Facu’s family for the asado I was skeptical that we would need a whole day just to eat one meal. But they were right. It took about an hour and a half to get to the club, at least three hours to settle in and cook the meat, an hour plus to eat it, and then several more to relax and digest. Plus the hour-plus trip back home.

But it was a fun day. Very Argentine. I spent most of the time with Facu and his 18-year-old cousin Tatiana. They’re both great people. They don’t get mad even though I pester them endlessly for Spanish translations. We spent a lot of time wandering around the club, watching field hockey games, soccer matches, and floor hockey with roller skates (which was, as they say here, “¡Super-intenso!”). Facu, Tati, and me:




At the club, we met up and spent the day with a bunch of the family’s friends. Our party was probably six or seven families – the kids were mostly toddlers; Facu, Tati, and I were the only ones our age.

Today was also great for my Spanish. I could feel myself getting better spending time with Facu and the fam – more so than when I spend a day doing activities with my compañeros from the U.S. (even though we speak Spanish to one another). I’m very persistent with learning new vocab, asking “comó se llama” (what is that called…) constantly.

At the end of the day, a bunch of the fathers gathered up for some soccer (fútbol!). Facu and I joined. These are pre-middle-aged fathers, and it was intense. The ball was bouncing off heads, chests, and knees left and right. These are professionals by day, soccer super-star wannabes by weekend (we’re talking soccer sneaks, soccer socks, soccer shorts, soccer jerseys … the whole deal). It was a load of fun. Turns out I wasn’t half bad at soccer, and we all had a great time. But they definitely used my Americanness against me. I would be coming up on an opponent with the ball and he would suddenly point behind me and say “look! look!” in stilted English. Things like that. The teasing was all in good fun. So long as you win. We won.

The day was also interesting for me as a comparison of Argentine and American culture. I just can’t imagine many American families spending literally the entire day with no ostensible goal besides eating meat and socializing. That thought kept occurring to me throughout the day, and I mentioned it to Facu and Tati. If this were a party in an American backyard, the guests would never arrive and wait three hours for the food to cook. Today was an unhurried day with good company. There was no goal behind the gathering today, no reason to be there besides to enjoy the asado and each other.