Clase de Nuevo

20 Julio

Like I ended on the last post, Monday morning I actually managed to sleep on the bus, so well that I missed breakfast. When we finally made it to Retiro bus station, Adam and I carried our luggage to the Retiro Subte station. I must say, it was a little upsetting to my lungs to return to the polluted city air. However, it was also interesting to be coming back to the familiarity of the city. I was coming back "home" to a place that at one point had been completely foreign to me. When I made it to my house I still had a ton of time before I had to be at class at 2:00, so I took my time to unpack my bags. Then, I took a colectivo to Recoleta where I had lunch at Café Martinez near our classroom. I wanted a panini, but they were out, so I got some other sandwich they had, caliente. The sandwich ended up being way better than a panini, and I enjoyed it with my café cortado doble as I finished reading Borges's El Sur, about a man coming home from the hospital. Class with Marta was enjoyable as always, after which I went home to start editing Iguazú fotos. At 8:00, I had my individual tango lesson with Giselle. This time, I absolutely loved it. We spoke in Spanish most of the time, which I appreciated, and I discovered that many of the stressful things that were going on in my group lesson were not my fault, but the faults of the women I was dancing with. Also, in the individual lesson, Giselle was able to teach me how to lead the woman properly so that she can read my leadings well. After our first extended period of dance, Giselle said to me, "ningun error" (no mistakes), which flattered me. At dinner that night, I was able to speak with some degree of fluidity with my family as I told them about my day and my trip to Iguazú. I went to bed pretty early that night because I had had such a long day.

21 Julio

Thus, the next morning, I woke up pretty early, too, and I had an amazing shower in which I cleansed myself of the muddy rain forest and stuffy bus of the last two days that clung to my skin. My computer wasn't working, so I went downstairs where I watched Sin idea (Clueless) with Brenda. Then, I made a treacherous journey to class. It was raining, sometimes lightly and sometimes cats-and-dogs. When it was raining lightly, I left the house to go to my bus stop, wearing only my hoodie to protect me from the rain. It wasn't too bad. I stayed mostly dry, but when I got out of the colectivo, it was pouring. I got under the overhang of a storefront where I took out the "emergency poncho" that I'd been keeping in my backpack the last 2 or 3 years. I bet you didn't know I had an emergency poncho, did you? So, I put it on, and it kept me dry, except from my knees down. They became drenched, as if I had walked through a baptistry (How's that for a Christian simile?). Since I still had a lot of time, and since I needed coffee to make it through our 4-hour class, I stopped by Café Martinez where I got a muffin and coffee para llevar, and they even put it in a rain-proof take-out bag. I enjoyed class for what it was. I felt like I was able to understand a lot more than I had in previous classes. Maybe I needed a trip to the rain forest to be able to go to the next level in Spanish comprehension. The rest of the day was largely uneventful. I had dinner with my family as I do every night and I enjoyed it. After dinner, Luciano enabled me to access their Wi-Fi because they had set up a security system on it because neighbors were slowing down their internet experience. I was then able to upload pics to Facebook, a very Argentine way to spend my night.

22 Julio

Wednesday morning, I collected all my dirty clothes and put them in bags to go to the lavadería. Then I went to my closet to get a clean shirt, but when I grabbed one, it was wet, along with all of my other clean clothing in the closet. Rain from the previous day had somehow leaked into the floor of my closet, and my clothes absorbed all the water. So, I sloshed them them all outside and hung them up to dry on my veranda. I had to wear a tourist shirt I bought from the Aripuca. The weather was pretty nice on my veranda, so I figured I didn't need to abrigarme mucho. This was a mistake. As soon as I turned the corner of my street I was hit by 30-degree wind gusts --the kind that make you have to push against the wind to get where you need to go. Horrible. In Spanish class that day, we reviewed several things, including esto árbol, eso árbol, and aquel árbol, which mean this tree, that tree, and yonder tree, respectively. Over all, it was a very informative day, and I got a lot of long-standing questions answered. De'pue' de clase, Cambria, Adam, and I went to Burger King, because (a.) Cambria's friend had told her that it's really good overseas, and (b.) it's one of the only restaurant that serves anything besides cafe y medialunas during merienda (If you've been following my blog, you should be familiar enough with these terms to where I don't have to translate them for you; if not, use the "find" function of your browser). Our BK experience beat our McD's experience, hands down. All of the food we ordered was much better. The three of us ended up chatting in the BK lounge for about 3 hours in a truly Latin American fashion. I found it really interesting that several people in BK came there for merienda, as they had nothing in front of them except the aforementioned cafe y medialunas. It's cool that such a meal is so ingrained into their culture that the fast food restaurant chains can't compete with local businesses without adapting to it. That night I had dinner with just the jovenes (young people) of my household, which was fun.

23 Julio

On Thursday I was all ready to go to class, but as I was waiting for my colectivo to arrive, I returned a missed call. It was from Luciana, director of Expanish. Within an hour of class time, our profesor, Guillermo Bustenduy, called in sick (again!). So I went to another parada and got on a colectivo headed for Expanish, in the hopes of saving Adam. He goes to Expanish every morning before class, and he doesn't use his cell phone, so he would have had no way of finding out that class was cancelled. Unfortunately, Adam wasn't there, but I did see Sven who invited me to go to La Boca with him and a couple friends around three of the clock. So I took advantage of Expanish's free coffee, cookies, and internet. They recently did some rearranging of their lobby area, opening up more space. Looking back, one of my first impressions when I went to Expanish was, "What a horrible use of space," so I was (and still am) really proud of the improvement. The added space also enabled them to install more computers for their 21st-century clientele. On the computer next to me, I noticed that the guy was reading an email in a language I'd never seen before, so, por supuesto, I struck up a conversation. His name was Victor, and he was from Sweden. Hence, he was reading Swedish. Apparently, Swedish has a dipthong indicated by this symbol å, which is like a combined /o/ and /a/. Needless to say, I was fascinated, and I found out that Victor is one of Sven's friends that was going with him to La Boca. While we waited for 3 (that was when Sven got out of his private Spanish lesson), Adam showed up to Expanish, and I communicated with Cambria and Bridget. Cambria was going to hang out with Derek, but Bridget was coming to Expanish, too. So soon after 3, the five of us left Expanish and took a colectivo to the touristy part of La Boca. The other of Sven's friends that was supposed to go was Edward, who I knew from the Iguazú trip. Edward forgot about going even though he and Sven had been talking about doing it all week. It was the Europeans' first time to La Boca so everything was really new and exciting to them. Adam and I mostly window shopped for souvenirs, holding up the group I'm sure. I ended up getting a matero (mate bag) for buen precio (a good price). La Boca is right next to the Rio de la Plata, and it was really cold and windy the whole time, but fun.

From La Boca, I took a bus to Abasto because I had a group tango lesson in a couple hours. Since I arrived so early, I went into the Abasto shopping center, a mall bigger than Galería Pacífica. According to Nico, Abasto's mall is average sized, and Galería Pacífica is "chiquito." I can't imagine the size of a big mall here. I was planning on coming here the following morning, so I didn't want to buy anything, but I at least thought I'd look around for some jeans and maybe try some on, so I would't slow Adam down. I decided that jeans were something I wanted to get in BA because, first of all, men are shorter here, and therefore there should be jeans that fit me better. Second, prices are lower here. Third, whenever I wear them at home and someone says, "Hey, I like your jeans. Where'd you get them?" I can say, "Buenos Aires, sucka!" Most of the stores' jeans were really expensive, even after dividing by three or four (which is how I get an estimate of dollar amounts). But I found one store called Soho that looked trendy and affordable, so I grabbed two pairs that I thought looked good. I didn't have any trouble finding my size, because they use the same sizing system we do. The first pair fit like emo pants, but the second pair was perfect. I didn't want to risk them being gone the next day, so I bought them. I was kind of worried that Soho was an American or European store, but I did some research later and found out that Soho stores are only in Argentina.

Then I walked toward my dance studio. I was starving, so I stopped inside a COTO grocery store to see if they had anything ready-made. I got the run-around from the security guard, who had to put my backpack in a plastic bag, tie it up, label, and sign it. I got some sort of pumpkin patty that was dry but sufficient to tide me over until dinner. This group tango lesson was much more enjoyable, now that I new what I needed to do, and what my woman needed to do. I ended up dancing with women from 4 different countries: the U.S., Argentina, Switzerland, and Israel. The Isreali woman's husband was Yetz, who arrived the same week as the others in my program. Apparently they are not orthodox Jews, because I was allowed to touch her. I had fun dancing, and I could even tell the different experience levels of the women I danced with. Some of them followed my leadings well, while others (the Swiss woman) were really sloppy and difficult to non-verbally communicate with.

When I got home, I had the dinner that Alejandra graciously saved for me. It was really good: arroz con pollo (rice and chicken), which I always love, served with a sauce made from nothing but cerveza negra (dark beer) and cebollas (onions). Muy rica.