Getting Some Ass

There’s not a whole lot of anything exciting to report but I do have a funny story from one my intermediate classes- specifically my favorite one that I mentioned before. In our last class on Thursday we had a pretty grueling lesson and since they were all really good sports I decided to slow things down the last 15 minutes, then it ended up being Profe Carol’s informal Chilenismo lesson. I told them about the new slang my roommates and friends were teaching me and asked them to teach me new ones, which they were thrilled to do.
They are pretty curious about what I do outside of the class and recently started probing for more details. “Carol, do you have a Chilean pololo yet?” (pololo being boyfriend); “Who do you live with?”; “Have you tried Piscolas? Piscoblancas?” (cocktails). We were going back and forth with the English and Spanish lessons and talking about cool things in Santiago when one of my students raised his hand and asked “Carol, did you get any ass in Chile yet?” As you can imagine, I was COMPLETELY caught off guard and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume I heard him incorrectly before going off about how inappropriate the question/suggestion was. So, I asked him to repeat himself. Again, “Have you had any ass since you got here?” Still thinking that there must be some misunderstanding I asked him to spell it. Sure enough: A-S-S. Confused and in denial that anyone in this class would be so disrespectful, I was ready to point to my butt to confirm what he was talking about when he continued with “you know, like the churrasco sandwiches. You can have ass Italiano (meat, tomato, mayo and avocado sandwich) or ass completo (meat, mayo and other goodies) and it’s really good. They have it here in the cafeteria.” I then realized that “ass” is an actual term used for a cut of beef and there really are ass sandwiches to be had in Santiago. I assured them I would go get some ass the next time I ate on campus. Naturally, I was in hysterics for a couple minutes after that and when I explained to them the English phrase “getting some ass” they were totally rolling and understood why my mind was nowhere near sandwiches and why I looked so pissed when asked about getting any.