¿Yo Hablo Español?
Now that we've crossed into Argentina, I'm finally in a position to speak to the locals, rather than yelling in English, gesturing wildly, and nodding a lot. My Spanish isn't fluent, but I took it for about five years back in school and I'm definitely on par with the neighborhood three-year olds.
Up until now, neither Brendan nor I could speak any of the local languages (just to recap: Greek, Turkish, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese, Lao, Khmer, Indonesian, and Portuguese), so we flailed along and got by alright with pleases and thank-yous and plenty of smiling. However, with Brendan's only experience with a foreign language being four years of Catholic school Latin (pointless, sadly), I'm suddenly in the driver's seat when it comes to communicating.
Yesterday, we arrived at our little studio apartment in Buenos Aires without a peso to our name, so we took a walk to locate the nearest ATM. We found it easily, but for some reason couldn't extract more than about 50 pesos, which is less than $20 USD. My international transaction fees are about the same amount. Not cool. And speaking of cool, Brendan started losing his rapidly.
"We have no money! God, this is bad," he moaned.
"Honey, it's fine," I said. "Let's just go inside the bank. We'll talk to someone."
But the security guard at the door wasn't having any of it, and explained to us in Spanish that if our cards weren't working correctly in the machine, a teller wouldn't be able to help us either. As I translated the bad news to Brendan, who actually seemed close to tears (for some reason, he's always a wreck after a day of plane travel. I blame the recycled air), he grew more and more agitated.
"Ask him why we can't go inside and talk to a teller, ask him how he can be so sure nobody will be able to fix our card, ask him why their ATMs only dispense 50 pesos at one time! Ask him if that seems right!"
"Sweetie, I don't know how to say any of that.. come on, work with me here. Keep quiet," I said through clenched teeth.
The security guard took pity on us and walked me through the ATM steps again, just to make sure I hadn't made a mistake along the way. Sure enough, we were denied anything above $20. He blamed our card and suggested we try another bank. I made to leave.
"What is that guy's problem?" B grumbled, looking back over his shoulder at the bank as we crossed the street.
"Honey, he helped us. He suggested another bank. That's where we're going. It's fine," I assured him.
It was at that point that I realized how vulnerable my husband probably feels. In many ways, he's always been in control on this trip: he handles the money, he sets the alarm, etc. When we've gotten into language barrier situations in the past, we've been equally clueless, backed away slowly, and laughed about it later. Now, I think my preschooler Spanish has given me an edge that makes him feel a little helpless. Poor guy.
But between you and me, it's kind of nice to have a dependent.
-Sarah
Comments
Hopefully the security guard wasn't scamming you.
Think about it:
You put your card in, punch in your pin and you only get 20 bucks. Could there have been a fake ATM ontop of the real ATM and the security guard is there to 'help' (distract your attention from the device) and make sure you don't go in the bank to check what is wrong. You got 40 bucks, but they may have you card number and pin.
See this link.
http://www.snopes.com/fraud/atm/atmcamera.asp
Check your account the next few days.
A few more fake atm links:
http://digg.com/videos/educational/ATM_scam_device
http://img.thisismoney.co.uk/i/pix/2006/03/cashpointSWNS140306_450x350.jpg
http://digg.com/security/Automated_Teller_Machines_Snatching_Your_Personal_Info
^^Wow that's scary... I hope for your sake it was a real ATM. If not I hope Karl Malden isn't reading this and shaking his head.
Dear God, please let us hear you speak Spanish on the podcast! That would just about do it for me.
Geez, scary. I hope that ATM thing didn't happen to you guys. Let us know.
