chisme

is gossip. And it’s taken to an art form here, but never in the way I want it to be. When my single older neighbor suddenly had a guy hanging around her store all the time, I asked her sister-in-law, who lives across the street, if that was her boyfriend. She said “I guess so” and then didn’t have any answers to my questions – Who is he? Where’s he from? Does he live there now?? Nothing. How could her own sister-in-law, who spends half of every day over there, not know?? It seems like chisme here revolves around unimportant things like who has a new moto or how fat someone has gotten, but in terms of juicy gossip about relationships or current events, everyone’s clueless, or somehow thinks they have to play that way. People pretended I didn’t have a boyfriend for weeks, but now it’s ok for complete strangers to ask me if I’m going to move to Argentina to be with my novio (and the entire town is upset that I’m not). When I want people to mind their own business, they won’t, and when I want them to dish out the dirt on other people’s business, they won’t do that either. Hrrrumph.