Faux pas numero dos...oh, and numero tres!

Just two quick moments to share that definitely turned my face bright red...After we spent two days together (two days that felt more like three weeks), with other students from the program, we got very used to speaking English all the time. Even on the university campus, the whole orientation was presented to us in English, and all the professors seemingly had no problem answering all of our questions in a thickly-accented version of English...even when we made the effort to ask them in Spanish. So later that day, when I decided to ask about internet access, I didn’t think twice about saying to a woman close-by: “Excuse me, does this building have internet access?” Instantly, I felt horribly culturally insensitive, as this professor whom I had yet to meet, quietly responded: “Lo siento, no entiendo ingles, solamente espanol.” Wow. What an awful thing to assume...as if I wasn’t in her country, trying to learn her language, and apparently assuming that she would obviously know mine. Ugh. 

Later, a small group of us decided to walk to a nearby store that we had heard sold school/office supplies, because some of the students had decided to wait to buy stuff for class until they got here. After walking several blocks, we started to wonder if we were even heading to right direction anymore...”Tomy” (toe-me) was nowhere in sight. After much deliberation, I was elected the one to stop someone random (and of course, extremely friendly-looking) and ask them if they knew where the store was. I let more and more people pass, getting unnecessarily nervous to ask the question that I had already fully planned out in my head. Finally, I reached out and tapped a woman’s shoulder and muttered: “Disculpa...” but before I could get past “Excuse me”, she responded with a shaking head and a frown: “No, no gracias.” What had I done wrong?! It took me a few minutes to understand that she was not actually denying me, or my potential question, but simply the stack of papers I was holding in my hand. When walking down streets in Rosario, you are often handed paper after paper advertising events taking place throughout the city...because I am curious to see what they all have to say, I have not been doing a very good job refusing these sorts of papers..and coincidentally, the woman instantly assumed that I  was the one offering the papers. Ha. Hey, at least I can say that I was mistaken for a local resident of Rosario, right?  :)