Ni hao!

So we had a kind of ironic cultural experience last night – I walk by Dragon Restaurant (Chinese) every single day on the way to school, and I have developed a serious craving for Chinese food, in particular sweet and sour chicken. I think I started dreaming about it. Now the thing is, as far as our ethnic food experiences have gone, Argentines completely fail at Mexican food. They do not understand the difference between a taco and a quesadilla; one time I had carrot strips in my taco-quesadilla, and another time a slice of sandwich ham in between the cheese and the chicken. So you see what I’m saying? I was a little scared to go to this Chinese restaurant for fear that it wasn’t going to be authentic and that would leave me depressed and really want to return to the States. So on the way to school yesterday I saw a Chinese woman outside and I decided it was time to try our luck, because it looked like our chances were good that we would have real Chinese people (zhongwo ren) cooking Chinese food (zhongwo fan).
It was beautiful, I’ll tell you. Billy and I were a little nervous, but the good news is that we were the third or fourth table so it wasn’t completely empty.
So the first waitress we see is definitely an Argentine wearing a kimono. She tells us we can sit down, and we go to the back, kind of, and pass by a desk where an authentic Chinese man is sitting. So we get our menus, and couldn’t remember what the heck we eat and there were very few descriptions, just chow mein or something else in every variety. Then, it occurs to dear Billy that “agridulce” is sweet and sour sauce, and we were sold. So the real Chinese man comes to take our order, and when I said two sweet and sour chickens he asked me if I knew what it was – that was a little scary so I just said yes and prayed that it really wasn’t something different here. No worries my friends, it was a little vinegary but it was pretty darn close to what we eat in the States. And then it occurred to me that when I saw the Chinese man, he reminded me of America. And Chinese food reminds me of America. So I came to the conclusion that strangely enough to me I think that China exists in America to me. For some reason seeing Chinese things in Argentina make me think of home. Weird. Really weird. Anyway, so I concoct a beautiful Chinese sentence “Shei shei nin, Wo ai chi nin de zhongwo fan” – Thank you, I love eating your Chinese food. (I’m loads of fun if you take me to a Chinese restaurant, wide eyed trying to find any one of the 10 characters I recognize and I try to make me elementary sentences. So you have to be patient to eat Chinese with me). So Billy decides I’m not allowed to leave without saying this phrase to the sweet little Chinese man. Seriously, you saw him and you just wanted to hug this man. By the way, an important detail, I was trying to make sure that he really spoke Chinese and wasn’t like 8th generation Chinese-Argentine, but he definitely pulled out an abacus, so that was a dead giveaway. Neither Billy nor I had ever seen an abicus in use, we thought those were just in museums! He tallied up everyone’s bills with an abacus. This made me love him even more. Anyway, I tried to get out shei shei nin but he didn’t hear me and walked away, but I had a second chance because he was at the front when I was leaving, so Billy pushes me over and I say “shei shei” and he thinks this is the extent of my Chinese so before I get out the rest he says it back and THEN I whipped out my fancy elementary Chinese sentence and he almost did a somersault, I swear. He had a grin ear-to-ear and said back to me what I assume was “I love to cook Chinese food for you” because only one or two words were different. So I for reals made legit friends with the Chinese man.
Moral of the story: if you’re craving Mexican food in Córdoba I recommend you just go for Chinese food instead.