Desde domingo hasta miercoles: pensamientos profundos

28 Junio

Sunday morning, I awoke dark and early and crept outside where I saw that no buses were running yet, so I hailed a taxi and it drove me to the ferry station not too far from my school actually. I waited around because I didn't have anything else to do, and I really wanted some coffee. Eventually, another cab pulled up. It was Cambria, so we waited around together. Meanwhile, I discovered that I would need my passport to leave the country and return. I had a copy in my wallet, and for some reason it didn't occur to me that that wouldn't suffice. So, I went outside and took a taxi back to my house, grabbed it from my room, and took the same taxi back. What a waste of plata. I made it back just in time to receive my ticket, go through customs, and board. This day would have a lot of waiting.

First thing I did on the ferry was buy some overpriced coffee and medialunas (croissants). Then I napped a little during the hour-long ferry ride. When we got off the ferry, there was a man filming us get off the boat, for who-knows-what reason. It was presidential election day in Argentina and there were other elections going on in Uruguay. In Argentina, they are required to vote unless they have a good excuse. I haven't figured out Argentine government or elections yet, but there were over thirty people on the ballot, many of whom would not even accept the presidency if elected. The next day, current president Christina Kirchner, whose husband was running for the presidency, gave a speech recognizing that she and her husband had been defeated. As far as I can tell, most people aren't too happy with what Kirchner has done or not done, but politics and the government here seem to viewed pretty negatively as a whole. Because of the elections and mandatory voting, our porteño leader had to leave us early to make the ferry that was leaving at four, but we took the ferry that left at 8:45. Also, most of the places in Colonia were closed.

Anyway, after we stepped out of the ferry station, we met a woman who immediately started telling us about the history of Colonia, about how it has gone back and forth between Spain, Portugal, Argentina, and Brazil, and eventually Uruguay. Her accent was hilarious, which you can hear in my videos on Facebook. She stopped us every once in a while during the walking tour and said very loud and seriously, "People, questions?" On the way to the historical part of Colonia, the city itself, was not extremely interesting. Instead, it looked like a Buenos Aires suburb. That said, the air was cleaner, it was quieter, and there was not nearly as much dog poop on the sidewalks. But there were several stray dogs, just like in San Telmo. When our walking tour was over we headed immediately to the place where we we were to lunch. I don't know if it was me, but it seems like we were there for a really long time. I didn't have much luck with what I ordered here, either, but I was glad that I brought my own water this time so I didn't have to pay for bottled water. I ordered a coffee, which was again, way too small.

During lunch, Adam, Alex, Leo, and I started talking about the things that we are passionate about. For Alex and Leo, it was food, and how horrible the food system is in the USA and how horrible it's becoming throughout the world. Then, one of them started asking me questions about my future plans for my life, and then the discussion got to be really intense, with me not feeling like I knew exactly how to answer all of the questions. Leo, and possibly Alex, don't seem to believe in truth beyond what is scientific, and so talking about faith and things of faith was difficult. Leo seemed to think that at least some groups of Christians were harmful to the world because they believe that we shouldn't take care of it because Jesus is coming back soon. I don't know any Christians with this attitude, but they said that Bush was one of them, but I don't know. That attitude seems pretty foolish to me. Anyway, it occurred to me that there was some irony in not believing in anything the Scientific Method can't prove, when so far science and humans left to their own devices are the ones who are destroying the world. Interesting that he would blame Christians. It kind of sucks being lumped into a category. I view my faith as extremely different and perhaps more liberal than most other people's at home, and yet to the outside world, if I believe that certain things are wrong and others are right, I'm exactly like every other person who calls himself a Christian. So far, that's Christians and American movies that are out in the world saying things about me that I might not want them to be saying.

After lunch, we simply strolled around Colonia, absorbing its atmosphere. I loved the people in Colonia. They seemed a lot nicer than porteños and more of them were drinking mate than I've ever seen in BA. Eventually, we walked enough to where we were tired and hungry again. The girls (Cambia and Bridget) found a place to collapse on the roof of a closed restaurant that overlooked the Río. Adam and I kept going. We walked along the river to a restaurant where I got a bigger-but-still-insufficiently-sized coffee, and a sandwich. My sandwich was covered in nasty olives, but wasn't very good even without them, and Adam ordered flan at my suggestion. Lucky for me, he didn't understand the flan, and I got to eat quite a bit of it. It was covered in coconut and dulce de leche. Yum. When we got done there, we, of course, walked around some more. I even attempted to scale a wall --Raliegh would have been so proud-- but the wall was crumbling into pieces so I couldn't make it up. There were some huge snails living in its crevices though.

Adam and I then encountered a group of 6 or 7 boys who were playing soccer in the street. Adam, who plays soccer, kicked the ball around a little and impressed them with his juggling skills. We started talking to them, and they were really funny. Two of them even spoke English really well. Shame on US foreign language learning. I mostly spoke with them in Spanish, but they were having fun trying out certain words on us to see if they worked. They asked if I had any pets, and then they kept listing names of animals that they knew in English. I told them that I didn't have any of those but that I had a kangaroo, which they thought was hilarious. I think they thought that I didn't know what I was saying :-). I told them that the kangaroo was big and it slept in my bed, which they also thought was hilarious. Then I said that my kangaroo flies, and that I fly him around to different places, but I didn't have him today because he was sick. They got a kick out of that, and for some reason they didn't believe me. They kept saying, "Kanguro no vuele. Kanguro salta." Kangaroos don't fly, they jump. I said that of course they do starting out, but then they jump really high and fly, and I demonstrated for them.

We said chao to the boys, and kept walking. Eventually we stopped in an heladería originally just to use the bathroom, but I decided to get some ice cream, which was actually more like Italian "gelado." I got coconut and a flavor I'd never heard of called sambayon, made from something like wine and egg cream. That doesn't sound too appetizing, but it was really good, and I plan to get more of it while I'm here. Just did a wikiSearch, and it's apparently an Italian dessert, called zabaglione (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabaglione).

After eating ice cream, we basically walked back to the ferry station because there wasn't much to do in the dark. Eventually, we left. When we made it to BA, it was raining. I took a taxi home. When I came home, I felt really welcomed. It was really funny. Everyone seemed like I hadn't been there for days, and each family member seemed like they had something to tell me. I must say, It was a good feeling. Alejandra had saved me some dinner, so I ate that, and then retired. Also, that night, three new people came to live with us: a family from Ohio. Their presence here makes me feel like a BA veteran.

29 Junio

Monday, all I did was go to class and eat dinner, but some interesting things happened in between. Class was normal and fun with Merkx-like Marta. From class, Adam and I were hungry so we headed for the Subte station, and near it was a small restaurant. The place cracked me up. It was like a sports bar or something with really cheap food and a TV in the back. All of their clients seemed like hard-working men, and not a single woman entered the restaurant. Adam thought he ordered coffee and panchos, but we ended up getting coffee and something something different, but it was really good. It was like a ham and beef sandwich with vegetables and self-serve salsas. It kinda tasted like a gyro, and I wouldn't mind having another before I go. I parted from Adam on the Subte to catch a different train, and as soon as the train started moving, a grungy man came up to me and started asking me for money. I tried to pretend I didn't understand him, which was half-way true. He talked kind of low. He further explained that he was a "druggie" (he used the English word), and he needed 2 pesos for a pastilla, a pill. I was kind of confused about why he was telling me this, because it definitely did not help his case. I didn't even have 2 pesos on me anyway. The Subte was pretty crowded. I kept trying to ignore him, and he was getting really frustrated. I told him I didn't speak Spanish in my best Spanish accent (I need to work on that), and he laughed at me. He later asked why I kept looking away and pretending to not understand him. Eventually, he got tired of trying to communicate with me and got off the subway. I'm just glad he didn't wait to get off at the stop I needed. Then I talked for a little bit with an old Argentine man who saw it all go down. He said that the man wasn't thinking straight. I got off on the next stop and made it safely home.

Warning: Deep Thoughts Ahead

We had a lot of people for dinner that night, since the new family came. At one point both families, who are both agnostic from Catholic backgrounds, asked me what it was like to be Baptist. This, to me is a strange question. They asked if there were things that I had to do like in the Catholic church. I responded the best I could in Spanish, but it definitely got me thinking. To me, the only thing that it seems like I have to do for my "religion" is go to church every week, which I said. All of the other "practices" I don't feel like they are requirements, but I want to do them. If I go too long without journaling (which for me is the equivalent of prayer), I get confused and perplexed about the world with no outlet. If I go too long without reading the Bible, I feel restless and don't have peace. Then Alejandra asked about moral things like having sex before marriage. It occurred to me that really all of my moral inclinations haven't really come from my religion or the Bible as much as they've come from my upbringing itself. But then again, I don't think I believe what I believe morally just to appease everyone around me. My mind doesn't work like like. At some point, I've logically justified to myself why something is morally wrong for me to do, by weighing pros and cons of expected results and sometimes seeing if the Bible has something to say on the issue. The Bible lays out some moral absolutes, but on many issues, the Bible is silent or unclear, even though some read into it answers that aren't there. For those, I've decided not to do them because they will cause harm to me or to the community around me, to those whom I love. In that sense, it is morally wrong to me. For example, most conservative Christians define marriage as a union between one man and one woman (This definition is mostly anti-homosexuality, but I'm going a different direction.) What about the tribes in Africa and around the world, for whom polygamy is (was) a part of their long-standing culture? To them, it was a deep-seated social structure, and in many ways it benefited their ways of life, yet when Christian missionaries came they condemned them for it and demanded them to change, even though the Biblical patriarchs themselves were often polygamist. I wonder what the missionaries said to them whenever they stumbled upon Genesis. Kings David and Solomon slept with a different woman every night, and yet David's only recorded remorse occurs when he sleeps with the wife of another man. Does that mean that I can sleep with whichever women I want as long as they don't belong to any other man? I don't think I would go as far as to say that, but it seems to me that morality is tied a lot more to culture than we typically give it credit. If I were raised in a culture where promiscuity was the norm (like in Buenos Aires) and I could find no Biblical mandate against it (that is, if I still valued the Bible) and doing so would not cause harm to me or anyone I know, I don't think I would view it as wrong for me.

30 Junio

Tuesday I went to class, Política y Economía, and I happened to understand more this week than I did last week, but poor Cambria was having a really rough time. It didn't help that the profesor kept calling her out, saying that her face told him that she didn't understand. She's considering dropping the class. I went home after class, and got to work on my homework: a paragraph about my room when I was a kid, and a legend from the US. The paragraph was easy enough, and I had a fun time with the legend. I retold the legend of the Oklahoma rose rock by combining two different stories I found on the internet.

1 Julio

I slept later than I would have liked this morning. I rushed around doing the things I do in the morning, and I ended up having to take my computer to school and copying my papers onto notebook paper by hand. I should have brought my flash drive. Before class, when we were talking about the legend we had to write, Cambria had a light bulb moment. She had just realized that the word leyenda, which even sounds the same as the English word because of the porteño accent, meant legend. I promised her that I would include that story in my blog. :-) Class was fun. I made a pun in Spanish, possibly my first. The word Marta was teaching us was elogio which means "a praise" or "a compliment" as in when you say something nice about someone. As an example, the profesora said that our classmate Alex (a girl) was pretty. I said, ¿Ilógico? which sounds similar to elogio but means "illogical." Thus, I implied that the prospect of Alex being pretty was illogical. I got a good laugh out of it.

After class, us Oklahomans and Bridget took a bus to Expanish, then left Adam there and wandered around BA looking for a place to have lunch. We stopped in a small cafe where I enjoyed some Coca and a sandwich. Then we wandered some more looking for an heladería (ice cream shop) to no avail. Then we went home, and I started updating my blog.