Fuck, man, I did not understand a word you just said

This is my fifth year coming to stay here in Buenos Aires. I've been here for stays of 2 weeks, 2 weeks, 6 weeks, and 16 weeks. I studied spanish for 6 years in junior high and high school. I travelled in mexico and guatemala for 3 months, and in central america, cuba, and mexico for 2 months, in addition to taking about ten shorter trips in those countries.

And still sometimes I can't understand a word people say here.

Of all the countries to study spanish, this is probably one of the hardest, at least for me, since I was raised on Mexican spanish. I guess this is because of the heavy Italian influence on the language. The analogy I came up with last year is this -- the Buenos Aires accent is to Spanish what the Scottish or Deep Souther US accent are to English. These accents really add their own sounds to the language, and I think they do so as well here.

But I know that learning a second language is an exercise in patience and all. But still, fuck, it is still so frustrating sometimes when someone asks me a question and I have no idea what they said. In particular it's frustrating when you ask them to repeat it, they do, and you still have no idea what they said. This happened to me on the subway today, a guy asked me something about the "linea" -- the subway line we were on, or which ones connected at the stop we pulled in. He repeated it, and again the only word I understood was linea. This really discouraged me, made me more hesitant to engage with people for the rest of the afternoon.

Not good. Must be stronger, more fearless. Uh-huh, I'll get right on it. I swear, this is one of the reasons that people drink so much on vacation.