A verb that can mean going for a stroll or a walk, or can mean "vacationing, visiting, stopping through". It has a pretty positive connotation, unless you're using it to deride someone's work ethic, like the time Peace Corps volunteers on the Pacific Coast earned the nickname "Cuerpo de Paseo" because they were spending too much time in the bars of famous surfing town San Juan del Sur. (The Spanish language name for Peace Corps is Cuerpo de Paz).
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I am adjusting to being seen as a transient curiosity here. There have been many confusions in conversations lately when people use the phrase "where you live (present tense)" to refer to the United States. I am live in San Miguel, I want to say. But this is in a culture where most people don't travel much or move around much, and where traveling a lot or being away from family or hometown sometimes earns one the suspicious label of vago, vagabond, rootless one, wanderer. I wonder if my "living in the States" oddly enough makes me seem safer, more relatable, less vaga, even though the term probably fits (in the sense of saying that I'm a wanderer, not that I sleep around, which is another implication of the term...that's how much being out of your place is looked down upon).
I was reading the paper on my porch the other day when a traveling salesman approached. While we waited for my host mom to come out, he asked if I lived here. I explained that yes, I did, but that I was from the US. However, I would be here for 2 years working with the teachers. So when my host mom came out, he started off his conversation with my host mom by saying "So the gringa who's pasearing here was telling me that...."
My initial indignant reaction was: WHAT THE HELL!!! I JUST TOLD YOU I AM HERE FOR TWO YEARS!! THAT IS A RIDICULOUSLY LONG TIME!! I COULD HAVE TWO BABIES IN THAT AMOUNT OF TIME!! I AM PAID A LOCAL SALARY!!! AND I AM NOT EVEN GOING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS!! I AM NOT PASEARING GODDAMMIT !!!!!
But after thinking it over I realized that it perhaps is the correct verb after all. Sure, I'm going to witness a lot of things here, but after 2 years, I'll be back in the US where most things work pretty well most of the time for most people and chances are that I could get a job with the commensurate benefits for living in the developed world. So citizen of the world be damned, I do "live" in America, even if I'm not physically there for a while.
So, only 23 months of pasearing to go!
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