The term “Castilian Spanish” could be used in three different ways: as the Spanish dialect for the region of Castilla in Spain, as the Spanish spoken in Spain or as the neutral Spanish understood in all Spanish-speaking countries.

Castilian Spanish sometimes is used to distinguish the north-central standard of Spanish from regional variations such as Andalusian (used in southern Spain).

Castilian Spanish sometimes is used to distinguish the Spanish of Spain from that of Latin America.

Castilian Spanish Sometimes is used simply as a synonym for neutral Spanish, especially when referring to the “pure” Spanish promulgated by the Royal Spanish Academy.

On Monday we went to a drum circle.   This drum circle had a conductor and about 20 different percussion instruments. The conductor would point at target drummers and then signal them by holding up a number of fingers as to the numbers of beats with which he wanted them to interject.Check out the video on YouTube.

Other than the various events i have been attending, I have been trying to learn some more spanish by just asking a lot of questions when we go out with native speakers and practicing with people when I can. Not sounding like an idiot when speaking another language is a daunting task. Taking the next step to speaking intelligently (or as though you are not reading out of a text book) invovles learning things like the subjunctive and conditional tenses, which both have a past tense conjugation as well. Also, learning phrases that are acceptable, or recognizable, is also difficult. For many of the phrases which I were able to roll off my tounge easily when I lived in Spain, are now not recognized as proper spanish.

One interesting fact I realized in asking all of my questions is that whether you are in Spain or Argentina, they both reffer to their particular type of Spanish as Castilian (Castilian Spanish) as opposed to just Spanish. For when I was in Spain, people would correct you when you reffered to the language you were speaking as Spanish, and here in Argentina, when questioning if my some of the things I have learned were said here, my Argentine friend simply said, “no, thats spanish, here is how we say it in Castilian…” -reffering to how it would be said in Argentina. Let me know if anyone has any thoughts on why this may be.

I have a couple of adventures in the pipeline. I will update everyone when I know what I will be doing.

After finishing writing on friday I took a long nap, woke up at about 12:30 AM and got ready to go out. By the time we had grabbed something to eat and gotten to the club it was about 2am. Suprisingly enough we were some of the first people there. Well we almost got it right, i thought we were right on schedule with the nap until midnight. The club was going strong by about 3:30 and continued to go strong until the early hours of the morning. It was seperated into 3 rooms with three different DJs, one of which was outside and backed up to the Rio Plata River, so when the sun started to come up, everyone migrated outside to watch the sun come up and listen to the only DJ that was still spinning in the club.

I had met a Columbian girl at the club who invited me to a concert on Saturday with her sister and a few friends. Marilyn Manson isn´t exactly my kind of music, but i figured it would be a good opportunity to make some friends and practice my Spanish. It turned out to be a whole day festival of heavy metal music and there was one ska band that was actually pretty good. The crowd was mostly goth and I definately stuck out like a sore thumb, or the Columbian expression is ¨como un mosque en leche¨- like a mosquito in milk. They didn´t serve any alchohol inside the venue which I found out the next day when I went to a soccer game that the purpose is as simple as crowd control. After I tell you about the game you will get a better understanding.

When Marilyn Manson was about to come out on stage (as well as between songs) the crowd shouted ¨Olay, olay, olay, olay, Man-son, Man-son¨. As far as my critique on the performance, despite the fact that Manson is a total freak, it was definately a sight to see. Click here to see video from Marilyn Manson in Argentina.

Sunday- Some buddies of Dakin´s from college were passing through BA and were planning on going to a soccer game and asked if we wanted to join. If I am not going to pass up the Marilyn Manson concert I´m sure as hell not going to pass up a soccer (futbol) game. The field is surrounded by barbwire and people were hanging up signs of there favorite players. The picture below is of a guy who climbed over the barbwire (without a shirt) to secure his sign and continued to hang signs well into the first half of the game.

It was a high scoring game- we were down by two after the first half, but came back to tie the game 3-3 with a goal made with only a few seconds left. Our game tying goal set the visitors section off into a rage. The section was right above us, and we started hearing banging followed by parts of chairs and whole chairs being launched from the balcony in the direction of the field but landing short in the stands in front of us (we were covered by the overhang). One man who was standing down there earlier went back down to get something he left and got hit with what looked like a ladder (my memory card ran out before I caught this in the video but the large white object you see in this video is exactly what nearly knocked this guy unconcious). Click here to watch the soccer game video
Eventually the visitors crowd started to calm as they left through a seperate exit. The home team fans were kept inside until all of the visiting fans were far enough away. We went to the edge of the stadium to observe all of the police in full riot gear waiting for something to happen and we listened to the rubber bullets being fired off in the distance. Once the noise subsided the doors opened and the home team fans were allowed to leave. From what I have heard, this type of thing happens every game and the events I had witnessed are far from the worst of it.

Greetings to all

Last night I sat down on my flight to Buenos Aires to arrive this morning at 6:30am. The girl I sat next to on the flight is from Chicago and she had been down here for two years working at an import/export company and is now getting her MBA at the University of BA. She gave me a crash course on the differences in the Spanish language in Argentina compared to Spain, where I had originally learned. The accent is extremely different and the first person conjugation of a number of verbs are even spelled differently. We shared a cab downtown since we were going to the same area, which worked out great because you have to charter a cab from the airport and she knew which one was the cheapest, not to mention I had nothing but an address for my friends place and wasn’t sure how well my rusty Spanish would hold up in getting me to my destination.

I spent the day walking around the town and when Dakin (my friend who I am staying with) got back from out of town, he showed me around to some places that I didn’t make it to on my own, although I am sure there is plenty more to see. Until next time.