Sobre Mesa

One of the best things about Argentina is something called "sobre mesa." The literal translation is "on the table" or "about the table." What it actually means is to sit around and talk with everyone at the table after having eaten a meal together, particularly dinner. You may be wondering why I'd even point this out, as many people in the US and other countries may feel they do this already. But in Argentina (and perhaps other countries in Latin America as well), they take it several steps further. Here people will literally sit for hours after dinner discussing almost anything, telling stories, and just spending time. It's not really something that's done in the US, and it's a beautiful thing. We're often too busy with the next place to go, the family splitting to the four corners of the house to return to their video games, internet, and TV shows. There's not enough time to sit and listen to details of each other's lives.

In Argentina, you need to be careful if you are a dinner guest in someone's house. If, at the end of the meal, you get up and start to clean the plates too quickly, people might interpret your well-meaning action as a desire to cut the after-dinner time short. Some people might even interpret your behavior as rudeness! The best thing to do is wait for someone else to start to clean up, and then get up to help out.

I hadn't really noticed the "sobre mesa" happening so much in Argentina, and I didn't realize why until I remembered that it was because we did it in my house growing up. My family would sit around the table together after dinner and just be, and when we all get together we still do. The first time I noticed that others didn't do that was when I ate over at friends' houses as a kid and saw the typical American "eat and run" dinner style. I never really put it together this way until now. But now that I see how it is here, I'm grateful that my parents kept the tradition of sobre mesa in our house growing up.

posted by goat hill dreamer @ 3:10 PM