Friday, June 15, 2007

Since I had class at 9:30 this morning, I got up at 8 and got ready. Part of my morning routine that I do not believe I have mentioned before is that of my window. I have a balcony off my room (someday I will get around to posting a picture) and a sliding glass door. This door does not lock, but the balcony is really high up (I’m on the third floor which is equivalent to the fourth floor in the U.S.). However, for security, there is a wooden cover with slats that rolls down and covers the door. There is a crank beside the sliding door and so every morning I have to crank the wooden cover up so that I can have light in my room. It is not hard to roll down (at night), but it is kind of difficult to roll up and sometimes makes my arm tired! The nice thing about this wooden cover is that if you crank it until it touches the ground, the wooden slats have gaps between them so you can actually open the sliding glass door (in the summer!) and get fresh air inside during the night, but still be safe. However, the nice thing for me is that if you don’t stop cranking when the wooden cover hits the floor, but keep cranking, the wooden slats move closer together and keep the room completely dark! It is a wonderful feature for sleeping in which is one of my favorite activities in the world! (It’s best after a late night of eating ice cream!) Anyway, I had breakfast about 8:30: a stale factura, a factura with dulce de leche, two cups of hot chocolate, tostadas with dulce de leche, and grapes and then I left at 9. It was really cold here today (for Buenos Aires). I wore my winter coat and was glad that I did! It was one degree Celsius when I left for school. I got there a little early. When we have class in the morning, we are in a room on the third floor instead of the tenth floor. It is interesting because our room on the tenth floor is always roasting hot and the room on the third floor is freezing cold! Everyone wore his or her coat during class. We had a short break at 11 and then had a lunch break at 1pm. I ran up the ten flights of stairs during lunch time to check my email, but all the computers were full, so I ate my peanut butter “sandwiches” while I waited. I got to use a computer for about 7 minutes before I had to begin my descent. I got back to the classroom at exactly 1:30 (when our break was supposed to be over) and I was the only student there. Eugenia said something to me about having to go somewhere for a minute and then she left, too! We ended up only having about 45 minutes more of class before we were done for the day. We were working with different verb tenses today and played a crazy game where one person in the room would pick someone else without saying who he or she was thinking about. Then the rest of the students would ask questions like, “If this person was a fruit, what kind of fruit would he or she be?” It was hard because we don’t know each other that well, but it was really funny. One student misunderstood the directions to the game and she was supposed to think of someone in the class to be describing and she said that the “person” would be the color gray, would be a very big animal, and if the “person” was a vehicle, he or she would be a colectivo (bus). We were all laughing because she was supposed to be describing someone in the room and describing someone in this way is not very flattering! We all laughed a lot during the game. After class, I had some questions for the professor and then I left to go to the zoo. It was cold, but the sun had come out and it was a nice day. I took the subte to the zoo to save time even though it was only three subway stops away, so I could have walked. I got to the zoo at 3. I decided to get the $4 pass so that I could see all the exhibits. I love zoos! I hate zoos! My overall impression of this zoo was that I feel sorry for the majority of the animals who live there because most of them have very small, boring habitats. I loved watching the monkeys play and seeing some animals that I had never seen before. It was kind of funny because my guide book says to visit the polar bears because they are supposed to be really fun to watch and the keepers like to talk to visitors and will feed them for you to watch and that there is a cool underwater viewing area, however, the polar bear area is “under renovation,” so I didn’t even get to see the polar bears! I took a lot of pictures and videos of the animals there. Honestly, one of my favorite parts of the zoo was watching all the parents with their little kids. I liked listening to them explain about the animals. There were not very many people there at all (probably because it was so cold) which was really nice. I was there about two and a half hours and I got to see everything (I think). One of the exhibits that I visited with my special ticket was the jungle habitat that was in a separate building. I had really high hopes which were shattered by the fact that there were very few animals inside and the “river” had lots of trash floating in it and a recording of a parrot played over and over. I thought a zoo near the jungle would have a better jungle display than that! It was okay, though. It was nice to just walk around at my own speed and look at whatever I wanted. One of the animals I really enjoyed was the American Bison because I had never seen one of those before… haha! I left the zoo and walked a few blocks to the Museo Evita. I was really excited to go here after learning about Evita in Spanish classes and reading about her. If the zoo was a slight disappoint, this museum made up for it! It is in an old house where the Eva Perón Foundation used to be housed, but it has been renovated into a very cool museum. All over the walls, there are quotes by Evita from her book and speeches that she gave. The museum had a specific path you were supposed to follow and it was basically a timeline of her life. In some of the rooms, there were TV’s with videos of her playing or slideshows of pictures with Spanish and (slightly strange) English subtitles. My favorite part of the museum were Evita’s dresses that were displayed alongside pictures of her wearing them. It was especially cool to see the dress that she is wearing on the front of her book. At the end of the museum, there was a little booth where you could purchase Evita souvenirs. I bought her book in Spanish, but it does not have the original cover with her in the dress that I saw. Of the many orphanages, hospitals, schools, and nursing homes that she started with the help of her foundation, there is an orphanage called Ciudad Infantil or Children’s City here in Buenos Aires. I want to know if it is still in operation and, if it is, I would love to go visit it. I left the museum a few minutes before it closed at 7. I walked back to the subte by myself in the dark and survived. On my way there, I had purchased two subte tickets so I wouldn’t have to stand in line twice, so I hopped right on without even having to wait. It wasn’t even too full, either, although I was standing, of course. I rode four subte stops down so I would be closer to my apartment and then walked home. I still find the subway slightly amazing when I got down one set of stairs at the zoo and when I come up (seeming the same stairs) again, I am walking down the street close to my house! It doesn’t take much to entertain me! I got home about 7:15 and Fani greeted me and then got dinner. I had soup, ravioli (made of vegetables with cheese inside) in a meat sauce, salad (that looked like bagged lettuce with most of the lettuce removed), and peaches with dulce de leche for dessert. I was really hungry because I had eaten lunch so early and was too busy to eat the fruit that was in my bag! Sunday is El día del padre (Father’s Day) and Fani was planning on going to her daughter’s house, but I guess Buenos Aires has a lot of problems with energy use and in the winter when people are using more energy to heat their homes, sometimes the taxis and buses don’t run because there is not enough gas. Our professor said today that sometimes the gas and lights even shut off for a while. Fani told me at dinner that she turned down the hot water heater to save gas, so I have an even colder than usual shower to look forward to the next time I shower! I was having a hard time communicating with Fani tonight. I don’t know what the problem was, but she was not understanding anything that I was saying. It was really frustrating. Fani cleaned up the dinner stuff and I put some stuff away from the day and then got on my pj’s to be more comfortable. Fani listened to the radio in her room for a while and then got up to turn off the stove (which is really a space heater in the living room). I worked on the computer for a while and now I plan on writing in my journal and planning out my day tomorrow. I have all day and I have no idea what I am going to do! I will have to decide soon!