Thursday, October 23, 2008

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.

4 comments:

Diane said...

Hi Rick,

Thanks for the new blog entry. We are signing up for gmail accounts today,

irving said...

Hi Rick
I like the new blog
I do not no about the kissig here

leslie said...

Hi Rick,
How are you? Thanks for the new blog, the kissing its sound very interesting.
Good night

Rick Kappra said...

Hi everybody. Kissing update...

Yesterday I got my haircut and when I met the girl who shampooed my hair, she kissed me. The guy who cut my hair didn't. I am not sure when to kiss and when not to kiss so I just wait for people to kiss me first.