I have a new obsession: losing weight. Now before you get confused by reading about all the desserts I have been eating, let me explain because it is not what you think. My suitcases both weighed 50 pounds exactly on the way here and I am afraid that they may weigh more on the way back. Of course, I have used up a lot of things that I brought here (namely granola bars and cosmetics), but I still am a bit worried. So… every time I use something, I think about how much lighter it is going to make my suitcase. I realize that this is mostly wishful thinking, but I cannot help but think on this fact every time I use a Q-tip, floss my teeth, or put on hand sanitizer or lotion! I’m crazy!
Also, yesterday I forgot to talk about how I lost myself on the way to my apartment. Now, you are probably thinking that I am talking about my trip to my apartment. Nope! I am talking about finding the door to my apartment. Now, after living here for 39 days (as of yesterday), you would think that I would be able to find my apartment in my sleep, but it is not really my fault. My apartment building does not have the floors numbered which is fine if you take the elevator, but I don’t. Usually I count the floors as I go up, but I was thinking about something and forgot to count. Now, my back-up plan for finding my apartment has always been that our neighbors across the hall (I sound like I’m talking about a dorm!) have a rug outside with sunflowers on it. Other than this small artifact, all the floors look the same. Yesterday, however, our lovely neighbors must have decided to remove their rug. I arrived on what I thought was the third floor (roasting hot in my fleece and out of breath from my power-walking) and did not see the rug, so I figured that I was on the wrong floor. I went down a floor and it was not there, either. I had to walk down to the first floor so I could peek down and see the ground floor and count my way up. Yes, I was on the right floor in the first place (I think), but our floor no longer has a nice rug to direct me. How dangerous of the neighbors to remove their rug without telling me first! (I have never met the neighbors.) Fani really needs a rug to direct the poor foreign students to their apartment! Hehe!
One last thing before I get on with the news of today. Apparently I wrote something about “sin grapes” in my July 3 blog. For anyone who was wondering what that means… “sin” means “without.” My messed-up brain sometimes switches between English and Spanish without me even realizing. If the Spanish word happens to be spelled the same as an English word, spell check cannot help me. What I meant to say was that I ate my normal breakfast, but without grapes! Sorry for the confusion!
Anyway, now that I have stalled for two huge paragraphs, I suppose I should begin telling of the day’s happenings. (Can you tell that I am avoiding my packing?) I got up at 8:45, got ready, and ate breakfast (two media lunas and two cups of hot chocolate). Fani told me at breakfast that I am the most ____ student she has ever had. I was really curious to know the missing word, but right then the phone rang and when she came back, so started talking about her family. I finally asked her what the word was. Apparently, she thinks I am very "prolija" which she explained to be very organized (I think). However, when I checked the dictionary later, I saw that there are two definitions for this word: meticulous or long-winded/wordy! It is funny because I think that both of these definitions could fit except for the fact that I can hardly get a word in edgewise here! I did some things in my room and made my lunch before heading out of the apartment at 10:15. I went to the ISA office and made it there exactly on time (10:30) to meet Tammy and Will to work on our presentation. I am researching the soccer team Boca Juniors, Will is doing the team Riverplate, and Tammy is talking about soccer in general. I was very slap happy after taking notes in Spanish over articles in Spanish about soccer (which I really don’t care about—shhhh!!!). We started talking about playing soccer in Mexico and the funny things Anne and I did together last year.
We left about 12:05 to go to the UB. Tammy and I sat outside the room and talked until the teacher appeared. Class was interesting today. We talked about an author named Horacio Quiroga who had five people suicide themselves in his family, including himself. People shared about their 4th of July celebrations last night (the majority of which consisted of mucho alcohol) and then we started correcting our homework. We talked about some grammar stuff and then we had our lunch break. I sat with Tammy, Will, Omar, Kay, and Sam. After lunch, Tammy and I were almost late to class, but we weren’t. We read a story called “The Airplane of the Sleeping Beauty” but it was not connected to the fairy tale at all. Graciana asked people to share their plane stories and Will told how on his way here, the plane started taxiing to the runway and then had to go back because the co-pilot’s seatbelt broke. He said they had to wait an hour before leaving. Nichelle said that the same thing happened to her one time only they had to wait two hours. Graciana wondered if maybe there was another problem with the plane that they didn’t want to tell the passengers and used that excuse instead because it seemed strange that it had happened to two people in the room. Somebody asked Nichelle when it happened and she said that it was on her trip here and so it was the same plane that Will was on! We all had a good laugh! During our “pausa,” Tammy told Will and me how to play Carioka (sp?) Rummy which is an Argentine/Chilean game similar to Books and Runs. We were planning on having a birthday celebration for Tammy since I was not there on her real birthday. We talked about vocabulary for parts of the face and different colors and styles of hair. Graciana gave us homework and told us that we are going to watch an Argentine movie tomorrow in class.
After class, we went up to the computer lab to check our email. I got an email from Jenny which was really funny because just this morning I was telling Tammy that I thought Jenny should be getting back to Guatemala soon. Tammy got a funny email from Gwen and we could picture her saying the things that she wrote in her email. I also had some emails from my family. I love getting emails from people! We only stayed there for a few minutes and then we headed to Freddo. It was really crowded, but Tammy spied an empty table and after telling us what she wanted, went and saved it for us. I ordered a piece of cheesecake, a chocolate cake thing with cream on top, and a brownie sandwich thing with dulce de leche in the middle (like I had before) because I had my 50% discount card with me. We went and sat down and the waiter soon came and cleared the table from the last people and I gave Tammy her 21 year-1 month birthday card. The waiter brought us our desserts and we asked him for a knife to cut them which he brought. I asked him to take a picture of the three of us, as you can see. We each cut the dessert on our plate into three pieces and split them all equally. They were all delicious! After we ate our desserts, we started playing the card game. It was fun. People were staring at us, but we didn’t think too much about it. An old man came and sat down at the table next to us and scooted away from us. We didn’t have time to finish it, but you play in rounds, so we just decided to stop after a certain round. I won the first three rounds, but then I lost the next two and ended up losing the game. As we were cleaning up the cards and waiting for the waiter to bring the check, the old man got up to leave and came over and started talking to us. We had been speaking our broken Spanish almost the whole time, but he asked us if we “Speak-y Spanish?” We said yes and started talking to him in Spanish. He did not seem to know much English because he switched back to Spanish. He said something about us playing cards there. We asked if it was okay. He said that it was okay for us foreigners, but not for “them” meaning the Argentine people. We asked why and he said that the police would come and arrest them and put his arms together like they were in handcuffs. We obviously were not gambling, but we were a bit horrified at the thought of the “cultural sin” we had just committed. I am glad we didn’t have to explain (in Spanish) that we were only playing for fun to some police officers trying to arrest us! I guess that was why everyone was looking at us so funny! Oops! I guess next time we will play cards in the ISA office or our favorite café in the back corner after asking our favorite waitress if it is okay!
We left Freddo about 7:30 because Tammy needed to get back to talk to her parents. We walked together until we had to turn. Will came to the grocery store with me to buy bread for tomorrow and then we walked to my apartment and he kept going. I came in and greeted Fani and asked her about her day. She was supposed to eat lunch with her niece and then her daughter and one of her granddaughters were supposed to come visit so I asked how it went. She had a good time at lunch, but her daughter couldn’t come because she had an allergic reaction after eating coffee and chocolate, so she had to go to the doctor instead. She is okay, though. I ate soup, shredded carrots (really old and dried out) and big cucumber (also dried out), and leftover pizza made of spinach-ish stuff and white cheese. I was too full for the flan. This flan looked even worse than usual. Apparently, telling Fani I am too full for the flan is much better than saying that I don’t care for it (again!). I had a list of 36 expressions using parts of the body that I had to find the meanings of, so I asked Fani after dinner and she gladly helped me. She knew most of them and guessed at the others, so at least I have something to say in class tomorrow. Some of the sayings were the same as in English like “to give a hand” and “with open arms,” but some were very different. I didn’t understand her meaning of all of them, but I wrote down what she said. It will be interesting to discuss these tomorrow in class. Fani went to bed and I took a lukewarm shower and started packing for Córdoba. They told us to bring our warmest clothes, but I don’t think I am going to bring my winter coat. It is a pain to bring and I honestly don’t think it will be that cold (famous last words). I am going to bring lots of layers, though. I hate packing even when I only have a week’s worth of clothes to choose from! I need to finish my homework, pack, read my Bible, and reply to emails before I leave tomorrow. I am trying to decide if I should go to bed now and get up earlier or if I should stay up for a while and then sleep in later. My life is full of hard decisions such as this and what cake Tammy and I should split! We leave tomorrow after class and will not return until Tuesday morning, so you won’t hear from me for a while. I hope to take lots of pictures this weekend and so when I return and catch up on my life and my blogs, hopefully I can share some of them with you!
Also, yesterday I forgot to talk about how I lost myself on the way to my apartment. Now, you are probably thinking that I am talking about my trip to my apartment. Nope! I am talking about finding the door to my apartment. Now, after living here for 39 days (as of yesterday), you would think that I would be able to find my apartment in my sleep, but it is not really my fault. My apartment building does not have the floors numbered which is fine if you take the elevator, but I don’t. Usually I count the floors as I go up, but I was thinking about something and forgot to count. Now, my back-up plan for finding my apartment has always been that our neighbors across the hall (I sound like I’m talking about a dorm!) have a rug outside with sunflowers on it. Other than this small artifact, all the floors look the same. Yesterday, however, our lovely neighbors must have decided to remove their rug. I arrived on what I thought was the third floor (roasting hot in my fleece and out of breath from my power-walking) and did not see the rug, so I figured that I was on the wrong floor. I went down a floor and it was not there, either. I had to walk down to the first floor so I could peek down and see the ground floor and count my way up. Yes, I was on the right floor in the first place (I think), but our floor no longer has a nice rug to direct me. How dangerous of the neighbors to remove their rug without telling me first! (I have never met the neighbors.) Fani really needs a rug to direct the poor foreign students to their apartment! Hehe!
One last thing before I get on with the news of today. Apparently I wrote something about “sin grapes” in my July 3 blog. For anyone who was wondering what that means… “sin” means “without.” My messed-up brain sometimes switches between English and Spanish without me even realizing. If the Spanish word happens to be spelled the same as an English word, spell check cannot help me. What I meant to say was that I ate my normal breakfast, but without grapes! Sorry for the confusion!
Anyway, now that I have stalled for two huge paragraphs, I suppose I should begin telling of the day’s happenings. (Can you tell that I am avoiding my packing?) I got up at 8:45, got ready, and ate breakfast (two media lunas and two cups of hot chocolate). Fani told me at breakfast that I am the most ____ student she has ever had. I was really curious to know the missing word, but right then the phone rang and when she came back, so started talking about her family. I finally asked her what the word was. Apparently, she thinks I am very "prolija" which she explained to be very organized (I think). However, when I checked the dictionary later, I saw that there are two definitions for this word: meticulous or long-winded/wordy! It is funny because I think that both of these definitions could fit except for the fact that I can hardly get a word in edgewise here! I did some things in my room and made my lunch before heading out of the apartment at 10:15. I went to the ISA office and made it there exactly on time (10:30) to meet Tammy and Will to work on our presentation. I am researching the soccer team Boca Juniors, Will is doing the team Riverplate, and Tammy is talking about soccer in general. I was very slap happy after taking notes in Spanish over articles in Spanish about soccer (which I really don’t care about—shhhh!!!). We started talking about playing soccer in Mexico and the funny things Anne and I did together last year.
We left about 12:05 to go to the UB. Tammy and I sat outside the room and talked until the teacher appeared. Class was interesting today. We talked about an author named Horacio Quiroga who had five people suicide themselves in his family, including himself. People shared about their 4th of July celebrations last night (the majority of which consisted of mucho alcohol) and then we started correcting our homework. We talked about some grammar stuff and then we had our lunch break. I sat with Tammy, Will, Omar, Kay, and Sam. After lunch, Tammy and I were almost late to class, but we weren’t. We read a story called “The Airplane of the Sleeping Beauty” but it was not connected to the fairy tale at all. Graciana asked people to share their plane stories and Will told how on his way here, the plane started taxiing to the runway and then had to go back because the co-pilot’s seatbelt broke. He said they had to wait an hour before leaving. Nichelle said that the same thing happened to her one time only they had to wait two hours. Graciana wondered if maybe there was another problem with the plane that they didn’t want to tell the passengers and used that excuse instead because it seemed strange that it had happened to two people in the room. Somebody asked Nichelle when it happened and she said that it was on her trip here and so it was the same plane that Will was on! We all had a good laugh! During our “pausa,” Tammy told Will and me how to play Carioka (sp?) Rummy which is an Argentine/Chilean game similar to Books and Runs. We were planning on having a birthday celebration for Tammy since I was not there on her real birthday. We talked about vocabulary for parts of the face and different colors and styles of hair. Graciana gave us homework and told us that we are going to watch an Argentine movie tomorrow in class.
After class, we went up to the computer lab to check our email. I got an email from Jenny which was really funny because just this morning I was telling Tammy that I thought Jenny should be getting back to Guatemala soon. Tammy got a funny email from Gwen and we could picture her saying the things that she wrote in her email. I also had some emails from my family. I love getting emails from people! We only stayed there for a few minutes and then we headed to Freddo. It was really crowded, but Tammy spied an empty table and after telling us what she wanted, went and saved it for us. I ordered a piece of cheesecake, a chocolate cake thing with cream on top, and a brownie sandwich thing with dulce de leche in the middle (like I had before) because I had my 50% discount card with me. We went and sat down and the waiter soon came and cleared the table from the last people and I gave Tammy her 21 year-1 month birthday card. The waiter brought us our desserts and we asked him for a knife to cut them which he brought. I asked him to take a picture of the three of us, as you can see. We each cut the dessert on our plate into three pieces and split them all equally. They were all delicious! After we ate our desserts, we started playing the card game. It was fun. People were staring at us, but we didn’t think too much about it. An old man came and sat down at the table next to us and scooted away from us. We didn’t have time to finish it, but you play in rounds, so we just decided to stop after a certain round. I won the first three rounds, but then I lost the next two and ended up losing the game. As we were cleaning up the cards and waiting for the waiter to bring the check, the old man got up to leave and came over and started talking to us. We had been speaking our broken Spanish almost the whole time, but he asked us if we “Speak-y Spanish?” We said yes and started talking to him in Spanish. He did not seem to know much English because he switched back to Spanish. He said something about us playing cards there. We asked if it was okay. He said that it was okay for us foreigners, but not for “them” meaning the Argentine people. We asked why and he said that the police would come and arrest them and put his arms together like they were in handcuffs. We obviously were not gambling, but we were a bit horrified at the thought of the “cultural sin” we had just committed. I am glad we didn’t have to explain (in Spanish) that we were only playing for fun to some police officers trying to arrest us! I guess that was why everyone was looking at us so funny! Oops! I guess next time we will play cards in the ISA office or our favorite café in the back corner after asking our favorite waitress if it is okay!
We left Freddo about 7:30 because Tammy needed to get back to talk to her parents. We walked together until we had to turn. Will came to the grocery store with me to buy bread for tomorrow and then we walked to my apartment and he kept going. I came in and greeted Fani and asked her about her day. She was supposed to eat lunch with her niece and then her daughter and one of her granddaughters were supposed to come visit so I asked how it went. She had a good time at lunch, but her daughter couldn’t come because she had an allergic reaction after eating coffee and chocolate, so she had to go to the doctor instead. She is okay, though. I ate soup, shredded carrots (really old and dried out) and big cucumber (also dried out), and leftover pizza made of spinach-ish stuff and white cheese. I was too full for the flan. This flan looked even worse than usual. Apparently, telling Fani I am too full for the flan is much better than saying that I don’t care for it (again!). I had a list of 36 expressions using parts of the body that I had to find the meanings of, so I asked Fani after dinner and she gladly helped me. She knew most of them and guessed at the others, so at least I have something to say in class tomorrow. Some of the sayings were the same as in English like “to give a hand” and “with open arms,” but some were very different. I didn’t understand her meaning of all of them, but I wrote down what she said. It will be interesting to discuss these tomorrow in class. Fani went to bed and I took a lukewarm shower and started packing for Córdoba. They told us to bring our warmest clothes, but I don’t think I am going to bring my winter coat. It is a pain to bring and I honestly don’t think it will be that cold (famous last words). I am going to bring lots of layers, though. I hate packing even when I only have a week’s worth of clothes to choose from! I need to finish my homework, pack, read my Bible, and reply to emails before I leave tomorrow. I am trying to decide if I should go to bed now and get up earlier or if I should stay up for a while and then sleep in later. My life is full of hard decisions such as this and what cake Tammy and I should split! We leave tomorrow after class and will not return until Tuesday morning, so you won’t hear from me for a while. I hope to take lots of pictures this weekend and so when I return and catch up on my life and my blogs, hopefully I can share some of them with you!
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