'Sleeping with the Enemy'

Last week Gary and I met with some of his friends before going on his mission on Feb 5th. He will be gone for 6 weeks and if his mission goes ok, he'll be back around the end of March.

During this week we went to eat at different places:

• We celebrated VDay (kinda early) at Benihana -a very tasty Japanese restaurant.
  It was great to see how they cook the food right in front of you, and how much fun you can have while watching the chef do that!!!


• I cooked at his parents' house my chicken/zuccini dish and we also made panqueques con dulce de leche (caramel crepes) that were a hit!!!


• Two nights in a row we went to TGIFridays: one by ourselves, the next one with Ale, Jose and Priscilla.

When we cooked dinner at his parents' house I was the ONLY Argentinean at the table. The rest (9 of them) were all Chilean.
For those of you who don't know, Arg and Chile have been always 'enemies' for this and that. I don't really know the exact reason but I'm pretty sure it's because of the land (pagatonia mostly) and some other things. I don't know why we grew up hating them... but oh well, that's the story. We grew up hating each other's country.

So that night one of Gary's friend started making fun of my accent - the Argentinean accent. Though I don't speak with the typical Argentinean accent anymore, he was making fun of my accent and the way Argentinean people speak.
If there is ONE thing that I HATE is that: people trying to imitate the Argentinean accent and thinking that just because we say CHE, and BOLUDO a lot that's the way to imitate the accent. Also, they make fun of how we say YO, CUCHILLO, LLUEVE, or ALLA.

I was a little upset, but I wanted to have a peaceful evening so I didn't say anything.

When we went out for dinner with Ale and Jose (he's from El Salvador) we started talking about her trip to Chile and how she didn't have any other friends but Chilean people and then she looked at me and said: OMG! you're sleeping with the enemy!!!
We all burst into laughter and we were just histerical laughing at how well that phrase came out!

My husband is from Chile and he loves his country the same way I love mine. But the truth is, none of us live there. We met here and we got married here and we LIVE here. Whatever differences we had with our countries, they are there... not here. I don't laugh at his accent, or the way he says some words. He doesn't speak Chilean to me coz he knows I won't understand him so he speaks a neutral Spanish. I do have a mix of Mexican and Argentinean so I speak a mix of both, but he understands me.

I guess when we live in such cosmopolitan places we need to accept other people's cultures and be a little more tolerant of how they speak, how some words are offensive and how imitating other's accent is NOT COOL.