Culture Shock and Megatlon

(Aside: As I write this at 10pm on a Saturday night, the mouth watering aroma of my neighbor's barbecue (here called 'asado') is wafting up to my open door and tempting me to eat a second dinner of free range Argentine beef).

By now, if you've kept up with this blog, you've followed an often exhausting account of the differences between Argentina and the United States. In a class I took on my way to earning my TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language) certification I learned that one of the stages you encounter after moving to a new country is culture shock. First, you experience a euphoric stage where everything is new and exciting, fresh and fun. This is followed by more harsh realities, or frustration with a culture that is much different from that which you came. Friends, I am stuck in a morass of culture shock.

After culture shock, you are supposed to enter a stage in which you begin to accept the new culture and become comfortable with it, to internalize it. The problem is, I'm findingit difficult to give up my grip on what I've come from. I can't accept that things are better done here. Lastly, I don't want to change my idea of the way things ought to be.

The problem is that if I don't move into the next stage, I will be stuck in culture shock and will therefore be frustrated for the rest of my trip. It would be much better if I viewed Argentina as a challenge or a game with rules in which I should engage. At the moment, I am chafing against it, like a rusty knife trying to slice a ripe tomato, I'm making a mess of many of my interpersonal interactions.

Take for example a recent experience.....(I'll start with background) In the Miami International Airport before my trip I made out a list of goals I wanted to accomplish or things I wanted to do in Buenos Aires. The list basically included all the things I wasn't doing in Columbus and reflection-based activities important to considering my next step(s) in life. I also wanted to find ways to relax and stay in shape.

Last week, I took the opportunity to revisit my goals and to my surprise, I found that I am actually pursuing most of the goals I had set for myself. The only goals I had not begun to address were those related to staying in shape, yoga, and swimming. For this reason and because I have been seeking out a place of peace and tranquility in the city (as well as somewhere air conditioned in the summer), I decided to splurge on a 6 month pass to one of the best and most pretentious gyms in the city, MEGATLON.

I visited Megatlon once and was attracted to the clean smell and feel, the 4 floors of activities, the uncrowded pool, and all the classes that were offered as part of the pass. After a week or so of pondering the idea and struggling over the high cost, I decided to go for it (after both making a list of pros and cons as well as reassessing my goals for this trip. I know, I am cheap:)

On the 20 or so minute walk to the gym, I equivocated even more about my decision. What else could I do with this money to enrich my life? Would anything else make me as happy? Should I be saving the money instead? Could I take a vacation worthy of saving the cash? Will I need it in the lean months when I'm not working? If I don't get the membership, will I wind up paying the same amount of money after coming down with some type of medical ailment as a result of allowing myself to get out of shape combined with eating my weight in steak every week? Welcome to my mental world.

After arriving at Megatlon and being pacified by the very kind and attractive attendent, I wound up very happily handing my money over. The smell of the chlorine reminded me of the Bay Village pool (My first memory of a summer pool in a Northern Ohio suburb), breaking my teeth on Now and Later candies, and jumping off the high dive for the first time. How could I not get the pass?

But soon after handing over the cash, the problems began. There were more fees and I hadn't brought enough money to cover them. There was a separate fee to have a card made for me. And I needed to get a checkup from a physician that ran about 12 dollars and would include a heart scan of some sort. Another issue was that the physician wasn't there and would only be in on Monday and Tuesday. However, I was told that I could use my pass until Monday by presenting my receipt in the meantime.

Before leaving, I looked over the receipt and asked the attendant to be sure that I was in the computer. I have learned in Argentina that you need to check everything twice, that folks here have a culture of (I'm not going to sugarcoat it) stealing from other people. It's called viveza criolla. Many people here think that if they can steal or rob people in an intelligent or clever way, they deserve or have earned the money that they've stolen. That is, they feel that if they can get away with it, it proves that they are more intelligent than the person from whom they stole and are therefore deserving of the money. This may explain why almost every foreigner I know who has come to AR has had something stolen, including myself (2 MP3 players and a memory card for a digital camera). It explains why my Argentine friend Erica recently had to called a second plumber to fix her water heater since the first one didn't fix it but instead stripped it of its expensive parts and replaced them with cheap ones. It explains why everyday tourists in the center of the city are the victims of elaborate and clever scams that typically result in pickpockets and long days waiting in the US embassy for new passports.

Anyhow, I was concerned that all the money I had handed over would be stolen, that my information wasn't in the computer, that my receipt would serve no purpose, that because I didn't have a card yet, there would be no record of my having paid. Would this thought ever have crossed my mind in the States? No. Unfortunately, however, thoughts like this now cross my mind every day and have turned me at times into the sort of pessimist I never wanted to become. On one hand, I know for certain living in Buenos Aires has made me more street smart, less trusting, more grounded. But this all comes at a price. There is something beautiful and light about being innocent. It's liberating and it allows you to live and risk and trust. When you live in a giant city with regrettable cultural undercurrents, you change to protect yourself.

But as usual, I digress....Luckily, when I returned later that night to use my receipt, it was accepted and I spent a blissful hour before dinner finding my freestyle stroke again after almost a year out of the pool. I took time to glide underwater slowly and to enjoy relative weightlessness. I was so happy that I had purchased the membership and looked forward to more days of aleviating the stress of this teeth grinding city.

The following day, emboldened by the previous afternoon of bliss in the pool, I returned early in the morning before breakfast. I was looking forward to starting the day off with an invigorating 30 or so minutes of lap swimming in the pool followed by a shower. The problems started at the front desk.

There was a new cadre of employees standing behind the desks in the morning. I flashed my receipt as before, but this time it didn't work. The woman scanning passes looked quickly and then said 'No'! Argentine women tend to be very direct. To people from the states, they seem very impolite, but to people in AR, it is normal. I still am not used to it, especially early in the morning so immediately, I was taken aback and frustrated. In defense, I rolled my eyes and laughed. This is how I respond to most of my frustration in Argentina. I know it's not a smart response at all, but it's better than getting angry.

I knew that there was going to be some type of problem with the pass that I'd just bought, that somehow it wouldn't be so easy. Trying to accomplish nearly anything in AR winds up being difficult in one way or another (at least for me in comparison to the States). It would be too easy to simply buy a gym pass and then expect to be able to use it in peace, especially after having paid a ton of money for it. In the states, if you pay a great deal of money for a gym pass, you expect to be treated very well as the client of an exclusive health club. In Argentina, however, it is not a culture of customer service, no matter how much you pay. I should have understood this before buying the pass. That is, employees in AR will always consider themselves in a position to argue with you. The idea that the customer is always right or that you ought to treat the customer well doesn't really exist. Instead, a culture of arcane and beauracratic rules dominate the work ethic of most employees. They pay attention to exactly what they're told to do by their bosses and little to no sense of customer service skills are instilled.

When I laughed in acknowledgement to myself that my theory about AR was again unfortunately proven correct, I could tell it automatically made the Megatlon attendant angry and defensive. My laugh to her meant, 'this is so stupid, you are so stupid, Argentina is so stupid'. Argentines deplore criticism of their country by foreigners, especially people from the states. They know we are frustrated by their rules and beuacracy. I suppose I wasn't really laughing at this women, I was just laughing because I knew that my whole idea of having a gym membership that would allow me tranquility and comfort in a big dirty city would not be as easy as I had hoped, despite all the money I had spent, despite all the money in the world. There would always be someone to mess with me, to make it more difficult than it had to be.

The point is that my laughing made her want to oppose me more, to find a reason then to keep me out of the gym. As a general rule, Argentines are contrarians. That is, they say the opposite of what you say as a dynamic of discussion. Also, they tend to like to argue and seem to thrive on conflict, like Italians I suppose. I on the other hand dislike conflict. I can do it, but it stresses me out.

So the Megatlon attendant and I were at an impass. I handed her the receipt and said, LOOK! I paid a ton of money yesterday to get a 6 month membership here. What do you mean I can't use the gym pass? She said in response...But you didn't pay, then she shook her index finger at me(an Argentine gesture that I dislike with a passion) No!

I said again, Look at the receipt, I did pay.

She turned the receipt over and saw that I had paid and then shook her head again and said, but you don't have a card.

I shot back, I can't get my card until the doctor checks me out and he is not here until Monday so I was told that could use this receipt in the meantime.

She said, No! You haven't paid for your card or the doctor.

I returned, but I can't get the card until I see the doctor and I know better than to pay for something before I receive it so I am waiting to pay for the card and the doctor on the day and at the time that I receive the service.

She frowned and after another helpful Argentine behind me agreed with me, she finally relented (after telling the helpful Argentine to go in before me. She was upset that he was helping my case and wanted him out of there. It often happens that other Argentines will get involved in arguments even if they don't have to. Like I said, they seem to like it. Luckily, other Argentines often come to my rescue to help me get through these types of incidents. There are some great folks here and some really regrettable ones, which is true everywhere but here they are more polar opposites).

After this stressful exchange early in the morning, I spent 30 minutes in the pool trying to work out the anger it caused me. On the way out of the gym, I said thank you as sincerely as I could to the attendant, hoping to change her attitude about me, but knowing by her cold response that our relationship would never be good, despite my best efforts.

And on the way home from the gym, I still couldn't shake the stress and anger. Not just from this incident, but from the cumulative effect of the stress of the city and the fact that things like this happen almost every day in Buenos Aires. It is no doubt culture shock and I am fighting for control, for my idea of the way things should be. But I can't control it or anything here and it drives me crazy and so I am always a full vessel and the cultural challenges I face every day bubble me over.

When your attitude is bad or you are in a bad mood, you are more likely to spiral down, to encounter other roadblocks, to respond worse to other challenges. It is like I'm an ice skater in the olympics and I've fallen after a relatively easy jump and then I've allowed my disappointment and frustration to infect the rest of my routine and now I'm falling and flailing on every big jump, making a mess of the ice.

In the end, I know it's not Argentina's fault. I chose to come here. I can't expect this place to make sense to me, to yield to my will, my need for control. I have to instead accept it, know that I cannot change it, and find a way to play the game and succeed. I need to change my attitude to see it all as a challenge, a learning experience, an exercise in adaptability.

A lot of things here may not make sense, but then again, a lot of things in life don't make sense. But we still have to play the game, to abide by the rules, to jump through the hoops. I guess I'd just gotten so good at the game I had learned to play in the states. Then I traveled to a new place and all the rules changed and I now I stink at life and it's depressing:)

But just as in Ice skating, I think the judges pull for the underdog. That is, if you fall early and then are able to overcome your lack of confidence and pull out some amazing jumps and have a flawless routine after that, you wind up scoring big points. Or, if you're Tiger Woods and you go 5 over par after the first round of the Masters, you can still come back, with the right attitude and without allowing what happened before to infect the rest of your game. Just as in sports or other games, it is mental energy and endurance that will allow me to survive and thrive in this experience. And if there is any silver lining in the constant culture shock that I'm facing here, it is that I am increasing my ability to be patient, adaptable, and that I am learning sustained mental endurance, new rules, and to succeed in a super-extended game. I imagine many great projects in life require this type of endurance: marriage, raising a family, running a political campaign, starting a business etc.

For now anyway, I'm beginning to understand that I can't go to bed tonight and put the chess board in the box and forget about it. The pieces will always be waiting for me in the morning, right where I left them, waiting for my next move.