June 6, 2007

Today I got up at 8:30am. I wore my favorite socks. I had breakfast about 8:45am. Fani had to leave for the oculist again. I guess he couldn’t see her yesterday for some reason? I don’t know. Anyway, I had two cups of hot chocolate, some tostadas with dulce de leche, and a media luna with dulce de leche inside. I am convinced that Fani is fattening me up for slaughter! Fani left while I was finishing my breakfast. I heated water and put it in my very cheap thermos to take to the park. Well, my very cheap thermos behaved accordingly by leaking quite a bit. Oh, well, it’s just water. I sliced my breadstick thing and spread it with peanut butter in the middle and packed my bag. I got to the park about 10 and sat on my new rag. It was a good thing I had it because the ground was wet. I saw two new records of how many dogs one person can walk! My first record was 19 dogs and then I saw a man with 21! That is crazy! I got my mate out and tried to drink it. I think my bombilla (straw) has too big of holes at the bottom because I was drinking a lot of the yerba (tea leaves). It was so nasty that I could not drink it as much as I wanted to. It was also a lot stronger than the stuff I tried before. I think it was because other people had drank it already before I did and so the yerba was not as strong. Some people put sugar in their mate and I think I might have to do that. Anyway, I watched the dogs, read a book, journaled, and read Heidi in Spanish. I ate my peanut butter breadstick and an apple about 11:30. It was really tasty. It was also funny because to everyone else it looked like I was eating authentic Argentine food when in reality I had a very American slant on it! I walked to the UB a new way, but did not get lost. I arrived early and went up to the computer lab to check my email. Eugenia was our profesora today. We did a lot of grammar stuff, but we also played some guessing games. We had one person leave the room and then we made up a fake situation about that person and when the person returned, we gave him or her advice about the situation and the person tried to guess what the situation was. For example, we said that one boy was getting married tomorrow, so we told him to rent a suit and buy a ring. The sky was really foggy today. We all said it was because of the pollution, but Eugenia said it was fog. I don’t think any of us believed her because we could smell it in the air and several people say they have headaches from breathing the contaminated air. It was really hot today—71.6 degrees Fahrenheit! We opened the windows in our classroom because it was roasting hot, as usual. At one point, we smelled the pollution (at least we think so) and Eugenia smelled it to and thought there might be a fire and so she left the classroom to check it out. She was gone for about 15 minutes so we got an extra break! There was no fire, of course, so we kept going. During our coffee break, I checked my email and ate a banana. I was really excited to see that this banana had a sticker on it for Anne Marie (who collects fruit stickers), but it was in English and stuck very firmly to the banana so that it could not be removed without ripping it. We played another guessing game in the last part of our class. Eugenia had laminated cards with different objects on them and one person would draw a card and have to describe the object to the rest of the class for them to guess what it was. It was not very hard, but quite fun. We got out of class 15 minutes early because we had to go to a meeting about Iguazú Falls at 5:30. We are leaving tomorrow night so I am quite busy trying to do homework, take a shower, and pack. I hate packing! I think I am going to pack everything in my backpack, if it fits. It is a good thing I brought my swim suit because we are going to go in a boat ride under the falls! That will be really cool. The plan for our trip is that we leave tomorrow night at 5:30 from the ISA office (we have to leave class early AGAIN—oops!) and we will take the subway to the bus station where we will get on a really nice bus (according to the ISA directors). It is a 12 hour bus ride and we will get dinner and breakfast on the bus, just like on an airplane. We arrive at 7am and the first day we are going to the Jesuit mission and a ranch and have a barbeque (asado) there. We will go to our hotel that evening and have dinner. Saturday, we are going to get up “very, very early” (according to Guillermo, one of our directors) at 7am and have breakfast and go to the falls. We will be there all day and will get to see many cool things which I shall tell you about upon our return. That night, we will have free time at the hotel from 5-9 because they have a pool and a gym. We are going to eat dinner after that and then our whole group is going to a club. I don’t know how this will be, but Guillermo said that it is different from clubs here. He said that we are going to go early though (11pm is considered early here). On Sunday, we are going to visit a Guaraní reservation area. It is supposed to be really neat. We leave at noon. We are taking an airplane on the way back to save time. We will land in Buenos Aires at 10pm and then a bus will take us back to the ISA office. I think that is the plan. After the meeting, I went with another girl to take money out of the ATM. It is really annoying here because we can only take out $100 at a time. I walked home by myself. It was about 6:40 when I got home. Fani greeted me and got dinner ready. I got my suitcase out of the closet and found my swimsuit. I think I am just going to take my backpack with me. I am supposed to be packing and doing my homework now, but I’m not. However, I need to get to bed at a decent hour because the only sleep I’ll get tomorrow is whatever I can grab on the bus between dinner and breakfast! I will try to post some updates about our trip on Monday! Chau!
Oh, I found out some more information about the elections. The election they just had was for the governor of Buenos Aires. They were about 15 people running, but only 3 that mattered: Macri, Filmus, and Telerman. The two who got the most votes (Macri with 46% and Filmus with ~20%) will be in the next election on June 24. The next presidential election is in October. All of the new leaders elected will begin to serve their terms on December 8, 2007.