Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Today I got up at 9am after 10 glorious hours of sleep. Fani had given me an extra blanket for my bed and I was toasty warm in my snug little bed. I got ready and had two media lunas with dulce de leche on them (they were a bit stale), two cups of hot chocolate, and tostadas with dulce de leche. Fani had finally gone to get her blood test done this morning which I thought was kind of funny since it was minus one degree when she went and supposedly she had been putting it off all last week since it was too cold, but it wasn’t nearly as cold as today! The laundromat man came and took away almost all of my clothes. I wore more clothes than usual this week because it has been more than a week since they last got washed and I got a lot of clothes dirty this weekend at the estancia. I got my stuff ready to go and packed my lunch. I left at 10:30 to walk to the UB. I was supposed to meet Tammy at 11am to go over our presentations, but I wanted to be a bit early so I could check my email. Tammy was actually already there and she moved to the computer next to me. We replied to emails and then we looked over each other’s part of the presentation. I decided that I liked Tammy’s “starting” better than mine! My English is atrocious! My Spanish is even worse, though!

We talked about abbreviations during the first part of class like brb, ttyl, and lol. It was weird because Graciana would not let us say them in English, but we had to describe the meaning in Spanish. It was especially funny when I still did not “get” the phrase even when it was described in Spanish. Graciana then shared some common abbreviations and acronyms that are used in Spanish. We then discussed the two texts we had read as homework. They were about the possibility of simplifying the Spanish language and eliminating accents marks and such. It was interesting to think about and we discussed how it would be if we simplified the English language.

One of the exercises we did after lunch was working on rephrasing what other people had said. It was really hard. For example, the sentence we were given in the workbook might be: “I am going to go to the store tomorrow, said Anne,” and then we had to write: “Anne said that she was going to go to the store tomorrow.” It was so hard and so confusing! I didn’t understand it at all! Someone asked Graciana if people really used this. She hid her face behind her workbook and said that people usually just say it the normal way like “Anne said, I am going to go to the store tomorrow,” but because we are in the advanced class, it is important for us to learn this other way. However, at dinner tonight, Fani was telling me a story about what her granddaughter said on the phone today and definitely was not using this form! We would probably sound really smart if we used this new way, but I can’t see it happening… at least not soon!

After the short break, Nichelle, Michaela, and Meghan gave their presentation about Tango. It went really well and Nichelle had brought her computer with pictures of tango on it and they had tango music. I wished that we didn’t have to follow their presentation! Nichelle told me that she had given this same presentation at her university before she left, so I didn’t feel too bad. We gave our presentation after Graciana had made some grammar corrections. Tammy introduced the topic of fútbol. Will talked about the team Riverplate and then I talked about the team Boca Juniors. I learned that the name Riverplate was supposed to be the translation of Rio de la Plata, but is not. The translation of Rio de la Plata would be “River of Silver” or something similar (I think).

After class, a whole group of people walked to the ISA office because the new students had their meeting about the trip to Iguazú. I called my mom and got to talk to Emily, too. After my phone card ran out of minutes, I checked my email until Tammy was ready to go. We walked down Cabildo and stopped at Tammy’s favorite store, Como Quieres. It is a cool store with lots of cute clothes and a slightly intimidating clerk. Tammy found a shirt and fleece that she likes, but she realized that she did not have her credit card with her so she asked them to save the clothes until tomorrow. We ended up going to Freddo and Tammy had a submarino (hot chocolate made out of hot milk and an actual bar of chocolate). We worked on the homework, but did not have time to get through it all. We left at 8:20 and walked to La Pampa before I turned to go home. I found Fani waiting at the front door of the building which was extremely unusual. I asked her what she was doing and she said that a man was going to bring a remedio from the pharmacy. I waited there with her and after he came, we went upstairs in the elevator. We rode with another woman who I think was going to visit a friend. The elevators here are very tiny, but supposedly have a capacity of three people, but it is a tight fit. I was in the back and so when we stopped, I told the woman she could get out first, but to my embarrassment, she said that she was going to the seventh floor. Oops! We went in to our apartment and Fani got my dinner ready. I had a leftover carnalon from last night, an empanada with meat and raisins in it, good shredded carrots and nasty big cucumber, and the sweet dulce de leche flavored whipped dessert. I told Fani about my day and she told me about her phone call with her granddaughter. I told Fani goodnight and got ready to take a shower. Fani asked me this morning if the water was warm yesterday when I took my shower. I told her it wasn’t and she said that when it is very cold out outside that the shower does not get hot water because it is so far away from the hot water heater in the kitchen. I don’t really understand this because the bathroom is not very far away. I wonder where the pipe goes from the kitchen to the bathroom. I practiced the limbo (which sounds better than saying I about broke my back trying to tip my head far enough back that the water did not run down my back). When I get back to the States, I think I am going to waste a lot of hot water the first few showers I take! I can’t wait! It was already late by the time I was done. I wrote this blog and tried to catch up on others from the weekend. I like to post them in order and so I have to wait until I am caught up before posting them. I am going to finish my homework and read for a bit before going to sleep in my warm bed.