Monday, I went to COPA to study for my Borges final. I then went to a café near my house to study with my friend Alex. We wound up talking more than studying, which was fine.
Tuesday morning I went shopping…for the first time in a while. I went to Merrell and bought a pair of hiking boots to wear in Pategonia. They’re super cute (I was going to buy a pair of light blue ones, but then decided that the boring khaki color would last me longer). Then I spent the day in COPA planning my trip and went to Retiro with the girls to buy bus tickets. Tuesday night I didn’t get that much studying done because I went to Blythe’s house to watch the midterm elections. At 3AM I finally left because I couldn’t stay away any longer and they weren’t calling the results of the Virginia election.
I spent most of Wednesday at COPA, working on my final paper for my grammar class and studying for my final exam for my Borges class. Then I went to Havana, which is basically Starbucks. While I was there, Bryan from Borges class walked in to study with Alex, who came later with Glen. So we had a last-minute power study/review session. Then we went to take the test which was pretty easy.
On Thursday morning my host mom and I left the house at 7:45AM to go to Retiro to take a bus to the beach. We took a taxi…my host mom instructed the cab driver how to get to Retiro. They argued about the route, she wanted to take the road with all the buses and he wanted to take the clearly faster road which has like 10 lanes and no buses at all. we took his road and she refused to admit that it was faster. We got to the beach midday and walked around by the water a little. it was too windy/cold to actually go in the water, which was kind of sad. The cutest thing about this town was that the roads, except for the main drag and one or two more, were made out of sand. Most of them don’t have sidewalks; this made it difficult to walked and I would suppose hard for cars to drive. Then we made dinner and went to bed. At about midnight, my host mom’s friends, Irene and Alicia arrived. They took a later bus because Irene had to work. While I was “sleeping,” I overheard my host mom telling them how helpful I was and how I always offered to do the dished and stuff.
We woke up Friday morning and had breakfast together. It was an Argentine breakfast, so it basically consisted of toast, marmalade, butter and tea. Then we went with Irene to her friend’s wedding. We just went to the ceremony part, which was at the borough hall and took about 20 minutes. We left Irene with her friends and went to a café. My host mom and Alicia are café obsessed. Then we walked up the main street shopping and stuff. Alicia bought a microwave for the beach apartment…this took a while because the stores were all closed until at least 5 PM, which meant that in the interim we went to the beach, had a huge lunch and went to another café because my host mom needed more coffee. Then we went home, didn’t eat dinner (no one had room for it) and played buraco, which is this card game they play here.
On Saturday we took another walk through the town and stopped by the wedding party. Irene wanted us to go to the wedding with her, but Gilda (my host mom) refused. it was a cute little wedding in this restaurant right on the water. We walked around and did some more shopping. Then my host mom and I went to a café (we had gone with Alicia to another one early that day to have lunch). We went home, played some more buraco and went out to dinner at this Spanish-style seafood restaurant. I had rice and shrimp in a saffron sauce which was amazing. my host mom got a little angry with me because I ordered a pitcher of tap water. They have this weird social class thing when it comes to restaurants…you can’t be seen drinking the tap water, even though when we were home she had told me that the tap water in the villa tastes much better that the water in Buenos Aires. she was like, no…you don’t need a picture of water, you can share my mineral water. I pointed out that no only was I going to drink my entire picture (dad you would have needed at least three), but I was going to drink her water as well. then, I horrified all of them by not ordering dessert. Argentines need to finish every meal with something sweet…at least all the Argentines I know do this. how was it that I wasn’t eating something sweet? they were so shocked. seriously, I couldn’t put more food into my stomach.
Sunday morning Irene left at 7ish to catch a bus back to BsAs because she wanted to get stuff ready for work. Alicia, my host mom and I went to brunch at an Austrian tea house. We didn’t wind up leaving the apartment until 11:30ish, but at 9:15 I had eaten a grapefruit because I knew we wouldn’t be leaving for a while. At 10:30ish my host mom and I went to throw the garbage out and she looked at me and was like, “Pobrecita, tenés hambre” (poor little thing, you’re hungry)…I had to convince her that no, I had eaten a grapefruit…I was not at all hungry. This took a good 5 minutes. At the Austrian place I had fantastic tea which was a mix of fresh fruit and spices. then I had smoke salmon (lox!), which I had not had since coming here…they’re aren’t super big on fish in BsAs.
Sunday afternoon we took the bus back to BsAs…part way to the city the AC broke and the bus was sooooo hot… I had a window next to me which I tried to open until my host mom told me I was not allowed to open the windows…. I let it go for a while and then tried again (the window was also stuck, which made it very difficult to open). she said people weren’t supposed to touch the windows because the bus had ac…I pointed out that we currently did not have ac and were stuck in traffic. Then the rest of the passengers started rebelling and getting very angry. we opened the windows. a little while later they magically fixed the AC, while we were still moving…not entirely sure how this worked out….and I couldn’t close my window because it was stuck….oh well, at least I got a nice breeze. Then my host mom wanted to send text messages to her daughter and Irene to let them know that we were going to get in late….she didn’t want her daughter to worry. however, my host mom has clearly never sent a text message in her life…because she didn’t understand how long it takes to type everything and that texts are for quick messages, not for a life story. when we got back to our apartment (only an hour and half late), she tried to call her daughter. This didn’t work because she had left the cordless phone unhooked from its charger. I have no idea why, but her daughter told her that this was what she should do…I noticed it on Thursday and didn’t even want to ask/argue/point out that when we returned the phone wouldn’t work. she waited a while and then called her daughter who had not received the text message because her phone was off.
Monday morning I woke up early and went to a café with my friend to work on our paper for our grammar class. At the café, my friend ordered what looked like and was called a bagel. It wound up to be a round ring of regular bread. She also ordered cream cheese which wound up to be sour cream. Luckily the sour cream came on the side and the bread wasn’t bad bread…its just wasn’t a bagel. our professor had screwed up and told us to write four pages per group, but then the program said four pages each. we had thought four pages per pair/group of three was a little ridiculous and had confirmed this with the teacher about 10 times (she has two classes and both classes had done the same thing). Monday morning, the professor sent us a very condescending email saying that we didn’t understand her/the syllabus (which doesn’t specify per student or per group at all). She agreed to let us have an extra week to finish the paper, but no one really wanted to take that time because we want to travel. So, I spent most of Monday at COPA where there is wireless and outlets (aka you can actually use your computer for more than three hours).
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