The cold weather from last week must have just been a front, because we're back to nice, early fall, fresh sunny weather. In any case, it's still pretty cool at night, but our landlord came over to turn on the heaters that hadn't been used in ages. Rather, he brought his son to turn them on. He should have known better; we are going to be breaking things all over the place from now on so that Alejandro (Sr. Ricardo's son) comes back to fix them. In Joyce's words, "Ay, su cuerpo, su cara, su sonrisa, aun sus dientes!". Too bad he's married. At any rate, our apartment (I always start to type department because the word here is departamento) is now a nice normal temperature.
On another bright note, I turned in my literature parcial (the extensive writing assignments that we have twice a semester that count for our whole grade save the final) yesterday. History was due last week, literature is now taken care of, and hopefully now I can start living a normal life again. At least I've made a pretty good friend in my history class (a local) who offered to revise and correct my paper, even for my other class. Yes! In the process of writing this assignment, I've pretty much fallen head-over-heels for Vicente Huidobro (Chilean poet who founded the avant-garde movement creacionismo), or at least for his writing. I highly recommend his work to any Spanish- or French-speaker (he lived in Paris for a good chunk of his writing career and published a lot of works in French first). For anyone who appreciates clever word-play and inventive use of the metaphor, he's definitely your guy.
Today I went to process my student visa. The DNM (Direccion Nacional de Migraciones) was about equitable to the DMV's inefficiency, but instead of old (often grumpy) ladies in frumpy sweaters, all the employees were young, and mostly of the attractive male variety. To be fair, actually getting through all the paperwork and waiting my turn in line wasn't too bad, but a couple other things made it take longer. Case A: I looked up the address to the building, Antartida 1355, and brought my map along with me. I found Antartida easily, but there are two sections of the street, one which is labeled with numbers on the street signs, and another which is not. Now, I would understand the address 1355 being in the un-numbered section if the numbered section didn't include all of the 1300's. However, this section was from 1000 to 1400, but 1355 did not fall among the addresses in this section (and actually falls before the 1000's even begin). Case B: I checked all the information my school sent me on what I needed for the tramite (visa), which included AR$200, which I had already set aside. Apparently, either the school made a mistake or the prices have recently changed because when I got there, I had to pay AR$300...and I had AR$280 in my wallet. Great. That meant another 30-minute subte trip back to my apartment to get the ATM card I had just pulled out of my wallet that morning (for security reasons), a trip to the bank, and back to the DNM where the employee with my information had just begun to process visas for a Chinese family with numbers exceeding digits on my fingers and a translator. At least there was a good view.
A couple other random things I wanted to share:
A few weeks ago when Joyce and I had gone out to a boliche (club), we left the club around 4:30, bored with the company, and realized we were hungry and had another hour and a half before the subte opened to take us home. So, we went to a pizzeria that was pretty busy (considering the time). First, we were entertained by a young guy who was there alone and had fallen asleep on the table, with a whole pizza right in front of him. This place was loud, and he was so far gone that he was snoring. Next, a group of scantily-clad, drunk American girls came in, nearly-yelling in English (but, to their credit, with a few Spanish words sprinkled in) and sat at the table right next to sleepy-head. They had a ball, trying to wake him up, poking his food in his face, and basically just not leaving the poor guy alone, all the while "blah-ing" the tune to popular Reggaeton music that they clearly didn't know the words to loudly enough for the whole restaurant to hear. All in all, they made me proud to be American.
I've learned of a cultural difference between Americans and Brazilians. Joyce was telling me the other day that oftentimes Brazilians will say that they don't care or that it doesn't matter when given a decision, but they nearly always do care, but it's considered impolite to say so (express one's opinion). As in, they say "yeah, that sounds good" if the proposed option is what they actually want and "I don't care" if it's not. Considering that about 90% of the time I'm given a choice between two things my response is "I don't care", and I sincerely don't, I finally realized why Joyce is so hesitant to believe me.
I realized that my time here is half-way over. That is depressing. I love Buenos Aires and am going to have a hard time coming back in August. It's a good thing that all you lovely people are there to motivate me to return; otherwise I'd probably end up finding some Argentinean to marry so I could stay.
As much as I love Buenos Aires, I'm still not a fan of men that could be my dad (or older) saying things right in my ear as they walk by me or greeting you in a mumble with the tone of the question so you don't understand and stop to say "what?" at which point the creepiness grows. I pretty much just ignore people on the street. I think that's what all the Argentinean women do, and why the men here seem to have the perception that they are stone-cold.
I've come to fit in more and more over time. People ask me for directions a lot on the street and I don't get harrassed by street vendors when I go downtown (they target tourists). I think I pass as a local until I open my mouth (inability to roll "R's" = obiviously not a native speaker). A lot of times, especially with guys, when they realize I'm from the U.S., they try to practice their (often very broken) English with me...That's kind of annoying. Maybe I'll start telling people I'm from Russia.
No class tomorrow! Hopefully I can get up and go to the MALBA (art museum) since it's free on Wednesdays. Woo-hoo!
Until next time...Besos! Chao!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment