Tuesday, July 10, 2007

I decided to read for a while because I was too cold and wide awake to sleep. I read my 5 Love Languages book in Spanish for 2 hours. It was so cold in the bus that I had to stop reading so I could put my gloves on. I was still wearing four shirts and a fleece and three pairs of pants! I decided to try to sleep and amazingly fell asleep for about a half hour at 2:30. However, it was so cold in the bus that I woke up freezing. I then spent the next two hours alternating between rubbing my legs and my feet to keep them from going numb. I was so cold! I have never been that cold for that long in my life! I did not know how I was going to make it for 7 more hours! I prayed that God would help me bear it and then Michaela walked by from going to the bathroom and said that she had been sitting upstairs and that it was much warmer. It was an answer to prayer, although a kind of strange answer. I joined Michaela in sitting on the top step of the stairs. It was not too comfortable, but I wasn’t freezing anymore. I sat there for two hours with her and thought and prayed. At about 7, the waiter man started moving around and getting hot drinks for the driver so we decided to go back to our seats and wait for breakfast. It was so much colder downstairs we could hardly stand it! We sat there for a while and he got drinks and alfajores for the upstairs people. We both took an alfajor from the box (white chocolate) while he was upstairs—shhh! He finally came around and offered us drinks. I had hot tea with sugar. I would have drunk just about anything as long as it was hot! He gave us chocolate alfajores. I sat there freezing after I finished my tea for another hour and then two people with a baby got off the bus. They had come from the upstairs so I knew there had to be free seats up there. I waited for about ten minutes and then decided to go up. I found a free seat in the row of single seats and sat down. I was so tired that I fell asleep almost right away even though the sun was shining in my face. I slept for another half hour before we were getting close to Retiro (where we would get off). I was actually hot and a little sweaty underneath all my layers when I got up! I got my stuff together and waited. When we got to Retiro (about 9:15), I got off behind Will and we quickly walked to the Retiro train station. We made it there without incident and get our tickets and were on the train in just a few minutes. We rode to Belgrano R station and then I walked about eight blocks or so to my apartment.

Fani was not home when I arrived, but I didn’t know where she was. I put my stuff down and got ready to take a shower. I ran the water for a time before getting in, but the water was as cold as in Mexico (this is NOT an exaggeration!). I continued to put things away and then the phone rang. I answered it thinking it might be Fani. She always wants me to answer the phone when she is not there, so I wasn’t worried. It was a woman named Amanda. She was really nice and I was able to talk to her without really thinking about what I was saying. I went to the kitchen to find some food and found that Fani had put hot chocolate in the microwave for me. I heated it up really hot and ate one media luna with dulce de leche on top and some tostadas with dulce de leche. Fani came home and we talked for a while. She told me that it had snowed in Buenos Aires on Monday for the first time since 1918! That is amazing and I wasn’t here to see it! I saw snow very close outside Buenos Aires, though. I got ready to go to school and left at 11:50am with damp hair and my coat and scarf (for the first time) and clean gloves. I was still really chilled from the freezing omnibus!

I checked my email at the UB, but it was doing something strange and my email told me that my mailbox was full even though it shouldn’t be. I deleted a bunch of stuff, but couldn’t respond to anyone, but I didn’t really have time anyway. I went to class and was the first one there (at 12:30) other than Will. Tammy came in and told me the bad news that she lost her ATM card and so now we are really poor and don’t have any money. She said that there is a way we can get money from the bank with her credit card. In class, we went over the homework which was very difficult and talked about our weekends. This class is much more laid-back than last month. We do a lot more talking/listening activities rather than taking notes on grammar rules which is nice. We had a strange discussion about the pictures of naked woman that are seen on the covers of many magazines on the street. To my surprise (and horror!), the majority of the class seemed to think that it was better to show pictures of nudity than to not show them. When the teacher asked who disagreed, I think Tammy and I were the only ones to not raise our hands. She asked us to explain why we thought it was not a positive thing, but we were not able to get our points across. Other people in the class commented that it is more natural to see naked bodies and that it fine to show nudity because we all have bodies. Tammy and I did not think that their reasoning made much sense! During lunch, we went to the cafeteria and I heard about Tammy’s weekend with her friends from Chile who came to visit and told her a little about my weekend. We went back to class and had time to talk more before class started. We did a grammar activity where we had to create a new law and write about who it was for and why it was important. Tammy, Will, and I created a law that forbids people to walk dogs without a bag for the “caca” to keep the sidewalks clean. Actually, there is a law already about this, but it is not enforced. We corrected a really long homework assignment with 50 sentences, but didn’t have time to finish before our short break. I was really feeling tired at this point! We finished this exercise after the break and some girls did their presentation about their favorite activities and places in Columbus, Ohio. There are lots of people in our class who go to Ohio State. We got some homework assigned for tomorrow and left.

Tammy and I walked to our fave café, but our lady wasn’t there. Tammy went there four times during the weekend without me! We decided to get a “lemon pie” that was really tiny and a piece of “cheesecake.” We sat back in the little room and did our homework and talked. We discussed how we are not fluent in Spanish, but we are no longer than English! I said the brilliant line, “I just disappeared it!” when I was trying to use my translator. We say ridiculous things like that all the time! Get ready to enjoy laughing at my grammar mistakes when I return! Another thing we do is switch languages unintentionally. Oops! We talked until 8:10. We paid quickly (it was more expensive than the desserts we had bought there before) and I had to hurry back. I have found that I can make it home in 20 minutes from Tammy’s if I walk as fast as I can. I left at 8:15 so I knew I was going to be late. Oops! We are really bad about that! I decided to stop at the grocery store to get bread for lunch tomorrow because it would only take 3 minutes since it is right on my way. The lady took out hot bread for me and I paid with a $1 coin to make it faster. I had to cross the street again because there were men working with a big machine in my way. I hurried up the stairs and was hot for the first time since I woke up in the omnibus. I had been cold all day and wore my coat, scarf, and gloves in class! Fani greeted me and got my dinner heated up. I ate soup, one of the two carnalones (pasta roll-up things with spinach stuff) she gave me, fresh shredded carrots, tomatoes (which I did not eat), and more big cucumber that looks like a gourd from the outside, and chocolate mousse for dessert! I was really full! I brushed my teeth and got my dirty clothes ready for tomorrow. Fani said that she didn’t know when he was coming to get them, but I really hope it is tomorrow because I have been wearing this round of clothes since last Tuesday and with my trip to the estancia, I don’t have many left! I put more stuff away and wrote this blog. It is now almost 11pm and I am going to read my devotions and go to bed!