the family bizness, power and telephone supply company aka power&tel and p&t, has sent me here to spread some good will among our customer base in latin america. if you know me at all, you know i love latin america.
why? you may ask. is it because of the nearly constant smell of trash/diesel? possibly the struggling infrastructures? the keep-staring-even-though-i-caught-you-staring-and-we-are-making-eye-contact-now policy? maybe even because of the ladies' affinity of lycra and over zealous cleavage? nahhhh. i love it because of the culture, for its commitment to family, food, and naps, three things i myself am also a big proponent of.
1.family. if i could live on a pitts-pentecost family compound, i for sure would. dinners together lots of nights, only having to walk a few hundred feet to all of my babysitting jobs, it would be an oasis! i dont know how my future husband, cam newton (please, jesus!), will feel about this potential living arrangement, but he'll be gone during football season anyway so nbd.
2. food. are there words to describe my deep and passionate relationship with food? soul-warming is the only phrase that comes to mind, but similarly when describing most things that are truly good and wonderful (relationship with jesus, love, a national championship), words fail.
3. naps. yeeeeessss.
anyway, back to my trip, real life. time to stop fantasizing about my three aforementioned loves (four if you count cam). so, i'm going on sales calls with my new bffl ernesto, meeting clients, smiling a lot and trying to hang on and comprehend español puertoriquennse while they are using legit spanglish. when i asked about the blatant mixture of languages, ernesto and some of the customers we were meeting chuckled and said "of course, we can say "estoy 'daddy day care' or 'vamos a parquear.'" i laughed along and nodded thinking of course i would say something like 'i am daddy daycare-ing in my real english-speaking life. the real word meaning to park is estacionar, but who doesnt like making up verbs. we in america are just as guilty. just go and ask your grandmother if she has defriended one of her sunday school classmates or bridge pals lately.
what i'm getting at is that languages are living, growing organisms, much like the bacteria growing in my eye as i type. i woke up with what ernesto has dubbed my "estink eye"
so here i am, in my hotel watching jersey shore reruns and nursing my estink eye back to full whiteness. thanks be to ibuprofen for reducing the inflamtion so goopy tears arent running down my the right side of my face while representing my beloved uncle jim.
hasta luego.
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