I'll Be Missing the Kissing

Last night, my good friend and wonderful colleague, Diane, skyped me from her ESL class at City College, Alemany Campus, where I also teach. It was great to see some of my old students and also some of my future students (maybe). It reminded me why I love my job so much.

The students had some really good questions for me, but I wasn't prepared to answer them and I was a little bit nervous. I think someone asked me what I would miss when I leave here.

Today as I was walking to the gym, I remembered something that I really like about Argentina that I won't have in the US - kissing!

Argentines kiss everybody, or almost everybody. It is a typical Argentine greeting. Men kiss women, women kiss men, men kiss men and women kiss women. I kiss my Arabic teacher when I go to class, and sometimes I kiss my classmates. I kiss my friends when I meet them and if I meet their friends, we also kiss. I kiss the receptionist at the chiropractor's office, but my chiropractor shakes my hand - we don't kiss (I don't know why).

I think the kissing is really nice and I will miss it when I return home. Maybe I can start a new tradition in San Francisco of everyone kissing everyone!

The other thing I will miss are the Argentine gestures. Argentines use their hands a lot when they speak. I think it is because there are so many Italians who immigrated here. My family is Italian, so these gestures remind me a lot of how the people in my family speak. Not all of the gestures here have the same meaning as Italian gestures, but I found this cute video on You Tube of a guy explaining Italian gestures.