High Maintenance

By Lawrence Selby – Guest blogger traveling in Montevideo.
I've settled into an evening ritual with my host parents. When I'm not out during the evening, we all watch television together. At 8 pm, we watch the news and at 9 pm there's an Argentinean soap opera on. Then, twice a week at 10 pm, there's another Argentinean program that we watch which is a sort of dance version of American idol. I still don't understand most of what people are saying but I'm able to pick out a lot of words and phrases now. It's like I can feel the gears grinding in my head when I recognize a lot of familiar words being thrown together rapidly. Sometimes when I think about it seems comical to me, especially since I'm a TV snob and would never watch these types of programs back home.
The picture of the three of us sitting there together and laughing at a silly Spanish soap opera is funny. Meanwhile, most of the time I'm not sure that I even understand what I'm laughing about. We have coffee sometimes, and Sr. Ortega teaches me malas palabras (dirty words). It's a different sort of bonding experience.
Daphna had suggested that I watch the news to help "train my ear" to better understand people speaking at a more normal conversational pace. In a previous job, I had friends from Italy that used to watch "Friends" during the evenings to help improve their English. Sometimes during lunch, they would surprise me with questions about English that I wasn't expecting. One time my friend Enrico asked me to explain what the term "High Maintenance" meant. I was so impressed because earlier in the year we had been doing words like ¨fork¨ and "tray". After I explained it to him as best I could, he then wanted to know if the term applied to both men and women! I thought about it for a bit and then told him, "No, Enrico. Only women are high maintenance!" Anyway, this gives me a sort of benchmark to aim for. When I can understand terms like "high maintenance" in Spanish, I'll know that I've finally arrived.