Tuesday, June 26, 2007

One year ago today, we were leaving for Hong Kong! That seems like forever ago! I can’t believe it was just one year ago!
I got up about 9 and got ready and ate my usual breakfast. I read in my room for a while and then I got an email from Tammy that said she was in the ISA office and that I could come meet her if I wanted. Of course I wanted to meet Tammy, so I left about 11ish and walked to the ISA office. She was ready to leave when I got there. She was hungry because she had gotten up early to go to the Intermediate 2 class which she left because the profesora told her that if she was going to transfer to advanced that there was no point in her being there. I wasn’t hungry because I had eaten about 10ish. We went to a little café called Nucha near the university and we talked while Tammy ate grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. We walked to the UB together. Tammy had bought a one-strap backpack at the UB bookstore that morning. It is a perfect size. We went to class. There were a lot of people in our class! Every half hour or so, more students would arrive (sent there by their professors)! We spent some time talking about the course and having Graciana take attendance. We all went around and introduced ourselves, said where we’re from, what we’re studying (in real life), and how old we are. During the lunch break, I went and checked my email after checking out the cafeteria with Tammy. After lunch, we changed a passage from first-person present to third-person past tense in partners. I, of course, worked with Tammy. We went down and bought our texts for the class. Unlike last month’s book, this one is spiral bound. It cost one dollar more for a grand total of $6 (US), but it is totally worth it because the book is sturdier. When we returned from the bookstore, we did a really hard exercise of changing adjectives to nouns. Although I know the meaning of many of the adjectives, I had no idea of the verbs and I couldn’t find most of them in my translator. Tammy knew most of them. When we started going over them in class, I had completed a total of 3 out of the 24 words. However, when she was calling on people, Graciana happened to call on me for one of the words I knew! How lucky was that! We did another word exercise and then had our little break. I went to the bathroom and ate a banana. I can’t remember what we did for the last part of class, but I know we got assigned some homework! After class, Tammy and I walked up and down Cabildo searching for tennis shoes that she liked without success and then went to the ISA office. We asked about Tammy’s ID card for the UB, but they aren’t ready yet. Tammy asked Guillermo what the word is for “safety pin” because she wanted to buy one to secure her new backpack because it only has Velcro. He told us a store to go to right about the street from ISA. He then told us a dangerous piece of news: there is an ice cream/dessert place that has a special club you can join for free that allows you to get 50% off on brownies, coffee, and desserts on Thursdays and 2-for-1 ice creams on Mondays! Our eyes lit up at the prospect and we rapidly inquired about how this is possible. We decided to head to the safety pin store because it is near ISA before going to Freddo, the ice cream store. We found some large safety pins and Tammy bought two. We walked down Cabildo. I see Freddo everyday, but I was afraid I couldn’t find it. After browsing in a few stores along the way, we found it and went in. Tammy took Guillermo’s recommendation and got the expresso ice cream and chocolate mousse. I tried three flavors (frutilla/strawberry, frambuesa/raspberry, and chocolate mousse) before deciding on frambuesa and chocolate mousse. We got forms to join the club and went and sat down at a table. There were two men there who were laughing at us (probably because we were asking so many questions). We ate our ice cream, filled out our forms, and did our homework. We left in time to get Tammy home on time. I walked halfway with her and then went home myself. Fani greeted me and got dinner ready. I had soup, shredded carrots and cucumbers, torta de verdura (kind of like kiesch), and chocolate mousse. We talked about different holiday traditions surrounding Christmas Eve and Twelfth Night. I also asked Fani about what happens when a child loses a tooth. She talked a long time and I didn’t catch all that she was saying about the teeth. I went to my room and Fani went to bed. I read for a little while before going to bed before 11.