Author Archives: Ruth

este fin de semana, vamos argentina!

Posted in le week-end, Spanish by

Keep Calm Y Vamos Argentina

After Wednesday’s nail-biter between Argentina and the Netherlands that was pretty much the exact opposite of the Brazil-Germany game the day before, I am so excited to cheer on Argentina in the World Cup finals this weekend. (That sounds like I actually know something about soccer and/or have unearthed secret Argentine lineage that would warrant a true emotional stake in this game. I don’t, and I haven’t, sadly.)

In celebration of the footballers I have come to know and love – for their amazing skill, awesome technique and adorable camaraderie as much as for their remarkably good looks! – here are some hispanocentric links for your weekend reading. Though you should really just be watching the Cup.

So, let’s start with one about that: This makes my love for Argentina grow infinitely.

And another: Gooooooooaaaaaallllllll!

And finish it off with something completely unrelated that I’ve never thought about before: language isolation among indigenous language-speaking Mexican immigrants to the United States.

Happy weekend!

two weeks in a row, woot woot!

Posted in French, music by

French meetup attendants

I made it to Meetup two weeks running, woohoo! Granted, I first wasted a half hour procrastinating across the street at Macy’s, which is pretty much the most hellish place in New York City aside from Times Square. This says bucketloads about how much I dread Meetups. Hopefully that feeling will subside once I make them more of a habit.

At this particular Meetup I spent most of my time talking to the two lovely folks above. One is the Chinese woman I had met very briefly last week. Her name is Anney and I found out she works in financial services. The other guy is from Mauritania and he told me he would sue me if I used his name on my blog. I think he was joking but better safe than sorry. 🙂

I was talking to him (let’s call him Pierre, because why not?) about our mutual love of West African music. Mine is a surface level love in that I only listen via a Youssou N’Dour Pandora station, and only once in a while – but I am transported when I do. Pierre recommended Baaba Maal, who I’ve just spent the last half hour bopping along to at my desk.

For your own listening pleasure, I leave you with this gem:

the gleaners

Posted in French, movies & tv by

The Gleaners

Last week I killed two birds with one stone – got some French practice in while viewing an acclaimed documentary by Agnes Varda, “The Gleaners and I.” Though it was slow going and I found the first half pretty boring, eventually the meandering, off-the-beaten-path storytelling grew on me.

Gleaners are traditionally people who follow along after the harvest, picking up all the crops that have been missed by the reapers. Taking her inspiration/point of departure from the Jean-François Millet painting above, Varda went out in search of modern day gleaners – not only farm foragers but also trash pickers, junk refurbishers, upcyclers, and artists who find their raw materials on the streets. Between vignettes about these people, Varda added little interstitial bits of weirdness and whimsy – her hand making circles around distant trucks; a lens cap’s “dance” as the camera bumps along on an accidentally filmed walk; a robed judge standing in a field explaining property law. My neurotic brain is drawn to the meta, so the idea of Varda gleaning all her footage for odds and ends to throw into the mix was sort of delightful to me (even when not so delightful to watch).

The slow pace did make following along in French a lot easier. I tried to ignore the subtitles as much as possible, but I should have just turned them off. It’s so hard to avoid your eye wandering down to them even when you can understand most of what’s being said.

If I were really committed, I would rewatch the movie without subtitles and try to glean some new vocabulary now that I know the general story. 🙂

(Let’s face it, I’m not that committed – but I do still want to watch a couple of Varda’s other films that I’ve heard good things about: The Beaches of Agnès and Cleo from 5 to 7.)

have a good weekend!

Posted in le week-end by

Screen Shot 2014-07-04 at 4.00.20 PM

Fireworks are one of my favorite things and I am so excited to see them tonight! Though I am less excited about the thunderstorm that may or may not precede and possibly ruin the festivities.

A blustery day off like this one calls for an indoor adventure so I’m about to head six blocks away to the Brooklyn Museum to see the new summer exhibits. Ai Weiwei and “Art and Civil Rights in the 60’s” both look  great.

Tomorrow I will be heading about six blocks in the opposite direction to a soccer-specific sports bar that is screening the Argentina-Belgium World Cup game. I can’t be bothered this weekend to head out to Soho at 9:30am just to watch with Argentines. Haha, I almost wrote “other Argentines” before realizing I am not at all Argentine so that would be a completely inaccurate statement.

Hope your weekends are spectacular and dry, unless you’re headed to a water park or something. 🙂

model UN meetup

Posted in French by

French meetup June 30

On Monday I attended my second French meetup since starting this blog. I met: a German radiologist, an Iranian realtor, a Parisian teacher/vintage clothing seller, a Lyonnaise digital marketer, a Chinese woman whose occupation I did not catch, and an American artist/art history professor. Quite an eclectic gathering. The flag garlands hanging from the ceiling for the World Cup heightened the international effect. (Hazy, nondescript proof of attendance above.)

One interesting thing I learned at this Meetup, from the Parisian: In French, if you think someone paid far too much for something you’d say “C’est du vol.” This translates approximately to, “It’s a steal” – which is what you’d say in English for the exact opposite, when someone pays far less for something than its actual value. I suppose if you translated the French to, “It’s a rip-off,” instead of, “It’s a steal,” the usage would be the same as in English, but I don’t feel like doing that because then I would not have any fun facts to share.

In other news, in the week since I signed up for the language exchange sites, I’ve received 3 messages from people who want to chat. I have yet to open any of them. Baby steps…

le three day week-end!

Posted in le week-end, learning tools by

Détail de "Blah, blah, blah" du studio Louise Campbell (Maison d

I only remembered yesterday that I had taken today off from work, which was a very, very pleasant surprise. I’m about to pack up my laptop and head to a neighborhood cafe in the hopes the cute environs will make my apartment searching just a little more palatable. I also used the morning to sign up for not one but two language chat programs. I learned about both of them – Conversation Exchange and Shared Talk – through people I interviewed for this blog. I knew this little enterprise would pay off!

I didn’t actually do any chatting through the chat programs today. I just signed up for them and called it a (baby steps) day. I couldn’t even get my mic to work with one of the sites but whatever, it’s a good start after many weeks of moping around doing not an ounce of anything language-related.

May the weekend bring lots of joy and plenty of bavarder!

(Photo: Detail of Louise Campbell’s “Blah, blah, blah,” by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra)

(get over the) hump-day inspiration: mr. rogers

Posted in inspiration & encouragement by

Mr. Rogers quote

I grew up watching Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood on a daily basis. He is one of those people you never have to meet in person to feel you utterly know and love. His voice was so peaceful and his embodiment of community, nurturing, and imagination so total and profound that he still functions like a security blanket for me – one look at his face and I’m instantly calm and content. I also happen to think Daniel Tiger is the most amazingly gentle and wise being that ever existed (yes, I use that word loosely). If I ever have a son he will be named Daniel in his honor. And because I love that name; I’m not entirely batty.

So of course Mr. Rogers would come up with the single most optimistic, encouraging, life-affirming statement of all time. Of course he would say, “Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.” Mr. Rogers is nothing if not a man who miraculously transforms your feelings – from despair to solace, gloominess to good cheer, limitations to opportunities – every time he opens up his mouth.

And every time I read this quote it applies to something new – whatever is going on in my life at the moment. Currently, it’s a reminder that though my charmed apartment life is soon coming to an end, I now have the impetus to downsize my worldly possessions in preparation for traveling the world. I have the chance to see things with the new perspective that comes with a move. My fresh start affords me the possibility of making new friends, finding new places to love, and reassessing what is really important in my life. And if worse comes to worst and I hate my new apartment, that could motivate me to bury myself in studying French instead… Although I really hope that will not be the case!

weekend weekend weekend yay!

Posted in le week-end, Spanish by

happy jumping dog

I can’t wait for this weekend! I’m heading back to Novecento early Saturday morning for more World Cup watching – this time Argentina v. Iran. To ensure we get seats, we’re arriving an hour ahead of opening time and two hours ahead of the game. Waiting around outside with the rowdy crowd will either be a fun adventure or a big pain in the butt depending on the temperature outside. As for the rest of the weekend, that will be filled with apartment hunting (terrible!), apartment cleaning (horrible!), and hanging out, which is still better than what I did last Saturday so I’ll happily take it!

I’ll leave you with this fascinating article I just read in the New York Times, about how people make moral judgments differently depending on whether the scenario is presented in their native or a foreign language. The reason for the discrepancy, the author posits, “is reminiscent of Nelson Mandela’s advice about negotiation: ‘If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.'”

Eeenteresting. And now I’m off to start the weekend – have a good one!

(Photo: Emery Way)

World Cup: rooting for the wish-it-were-my-home team

Posted in Spanish by

Watching the Argentina v Bosnia-Herzegovina gameAfter a highly unpleasant Friday and Saturday (which did end in good news, at least), Sunday was a breath of fresh air. Spent Father’s Day in Princeton with my family, the highlight of which was taking selfies with my two year-old niece. Then headed back to the city for the Argentina v. Bosnia-Herzegovina World Cup game at Novecento, an Argentine bar and restaurant in Soho.

Watching the Argentina v Bosnia-Herzegovina game

After waiting outside for more than an hour, my friend Lisa and I managed to snag a table and immediately made friends with a guy named Pablo who was decked out in an Argentina jersey and whose parents are from Mendoza. I told him I was here not because I am Argentine myself but because I had been to Argentina for a measly two weeks in February, loved every second of it, and just wanted to be amongst Argentines again. Even though I felt a little foolish admitting I was a wannabe, he approved and we got along great.

Watching the Argentina v Bosnia-Herzegovina game

The game was awesome in that BIH scored against themselves within 3 minutes, and Argentina held the lead for the rest of the game. The adorable, bedimpled, cartoon-like elfin cutie Lionel Messi scored a goal in the second half, and then BIH scored a goal towards the end, and then there was a nail-biting ten minutes of praying the game would not be tied up and go into overtime. It didn’t, and everyone was joyous.

Watching the Argentina v Bosnia-Herzegovina game

Being amongst people whose country you are deeply enamored of, while they are winning their beloved game and everyone is best friends with everyone else, is a pretty amazing thing. I knew that if I went it would reaffirm my commitment to learn French and Spanish and that it would motivate me to pick up where I left off about a month ago. And it did. I went home and watched an episode of Destinos, the telenovela for Spanish novices that is actually quite engaging in a strange and silly way.

Additional delights of Sunday at Novecento: I ate a huge hunk of lomo, or beef tenderloin, my steak of choice in Buenos Aires. I admired legions of handsome Argentine men both in the bar and on the soccer field. And I decided there would be worse things you could do than making Argentina your adopted homeland and blowing all your vacation funds visiting on a yearly basis. Thinking perhaps next February will find me hang-gliding in Cordoba or hiking in Patagonia…

¿Quién sabe lo que nos depara el futuro?

[I cheated and did that in Google Translate so I have no idea if it is nonsense or not.]

One thing I do know: next Saturday will find me back at Novecento for brunch and the Argentina v. Iran game. Vamos vamos Argentina!

Watching the Argentina v Bosnia-Herzegovina gameThat’s me in the foreground and my new buddy Pablo behind me. The fuzzy focus captures my warm fuzzy feeling. 🙂

i could actually skip this weekend

Posted in le week-end by

Martinique

I have an unpleasant experience ahead of me tonight and tomorrow morning and I would love it to just be Sunday already. I’m going to attempt to soldier through with transporting thoughts of tropical paradises, gluttonous feasts, and rent-stabilized penthouse apartments.

It was pointed out to me this week that when bad things happen I immediately throw up my hands and assume I can’t /won’t cope, when actually I have muddled through difficulties of similar scale quite capably for many years. So I guess that in addition to trying desperately to go to my happy place, I could also remind myself of my resilience whenever I find myself catastrophizing about what I have to go through this weekend.

May the next 24 hours go very, very quickly. And here’s to Sunday!… when I will be over the hump, a Father’s Day picnic is to be had, and a World Cup game full of delightfully well-formed Argentines is to be watched.

(Photo: Antoine Hubert)