Week Numero dos

yumm Mimi just brought me tea and crackers. She is too cute. This week has felt so long and it is only Wednesday, oy! Monday was a tad uneventful, lo siento. To start my day I had my first exam. I thought is was only going to take twenty minutes, I was misinformed. It took me a good hour to finish and I was the second to finish. Two classmates of mine took over an hour and half. The teacher had to tell them to wrap it up in order to learn something useful for the rest of class. Despues de la clase I had my first tutoring experience with Paula. Elizabeth (roomy) told me all you do is talk and she corrects you in Spanish. Sounds easy enough. Well after about ten minutes of trying to speak Spanish and getting corrected every other word, it starts to get really frustrating. Therefore I started talking softer and softer because I was tired of making mistakes and resorted to simple sentences. She was really nice and patient, but after constant criticism (at least that's what it felt like to me), I just kind of gave up. 

The best part was that I discovered my dyslexia transcends languages. In the beginning I told Paula that my sisters were dieciseis anos (16) instead of veintiseis (26). I started talking about how they live in Chicago and Pittsburgh and I don't see them that often. Then she asked me why they moved there and I said to be with their boyfriends of course??!!?!! Her mouth drops and she's like, "Que??!?!!? What is wrong with your family?" At this point I was confused. She then said "At sixteen your mother let them move in with their boyfriends!! I can't believe it!"... that's when I hit my head on the table, covered my mouth with both hands and said sheepishly "my bad. I meant 26.---I'm dyslexic. This happens a lot." She had a good 3 minute laugh after that while I turned red and decided not to give any more descriptions of things unless she specifically asked for them. Nisht gut (not good in Yiddish). I guess you could say it went down hill from there.... 

Tuesday was a lot better. It was freezing!!! I made the mistake of wearing only a t-shirt and a thin fleece. My saving grace was my scarf from Italia. I wrapped that thing around me as many times as possible until it covered half my face. When i walked into class my friend was like, "are you wearing that to protect yourself from El Gripe (Swine Flu) b/c that's not gonna do shit." wow, thank you. ----Side Note: So South America had their first person die of Swine Flu on Monday or Tuesday, I forget which day exactly, so ppl are flipping out more than usual. This girl in my class, Alicia, got sick over the weekend and told her director of her tour. They both went to the hospital b/c her symptoms were similar to El Gripe (aka the flu or any basic cold) and they both ended up in quarantine. Since then Alicia has missed class all week and can't leave her house for another ten days even though all she really has is a sore throat and a headache. That's basically the rest of our stay here. Talk about worst case scenario. It gets better, her roommate who isn't sick at all is also in quarantine in the house but is allowed to leave the house every so often, but when she does she has to wear a face mask. Ridiculous!! Another funny side note: So the first outbreak of El Gripe in this area occurred the first week we got here. This girl in elementary school caught it when she was at Disney World! How funny is that? The authorities decided to quarantine the ENTIRE school so Mimi's granddaughter was stuck at school for almost a day. The school is about two blocks from the University so it was a local spectacle. 

Continuing.... in class we learned about the preterit tense. For a fun activity our teacher gave us a list of questions that we had to get the answers to by asking people on the street. They were about famous people from Argentina, like: What is the name of a popular comic book character? Name the most famous person in tango history? ect... Besides the fact that is was freezing, we couldn't understand the answers that people were giving. One lady tore the pen out of my hand and corrected my entire list of answers because she saw that what i was writing down was no where close to what she was actually saying. Rude, but helpful jaja. It was a fun mini adventure. After class I got a small group of friends to come with me in search of the best pizza in Buenos Aires. True to my nature, I researched everything the night before. How to get there, what to order, how much it would cost, and so forth. (you taught my well el padre!)

Well we got off at the right subte station but then I realized i forgot my map. THE ONE AND ONLY DAY I LEFT THE HOUSE WITHOUT MY DANG MAP. Well, lucky for mis amigos I have a good sense of direction and only made us turn around twice jajaja. Just to make sure we were going in the right direction I asked one of those guys that hands out flyers and wears a billboard over their clothes. To paint a picture he was crossed eyed, hunched over, and limping. I kind of don't know what I was thinking when i approached him, but I asked him where the street i needed was and he gave me accurate directions. After that my friends were like, "why did you just ask the shadiest, creepiest man on the street for directions?? If anyone was gonna rob you, stab you, or follow you it would have been him." lol

El restaurante se llamo a Guerrin Pizzaria and it was muy deliciosa!!! I ended up splitting a mozzarella and pepper pizza with a friend. I also ordered this local dish called Faina. It's a thin layer of crusted chick peas that you order and put on top of your pizza. It is suppose to absorb the grease of the pizza and make it easier to eat it. Alone it didn't have much of a taste but with the pizza it was quite good. I'm glad I tried it. I also tried a local white dessert wine called Moscato. I shared a bottle with friend because a bottle is only 14 pesos (approx 4 dollars). what a deal!! It was funny because when the cajero (waiter) poured the wine it came out brown. Humm that's not what white wine is suppose to look like?? Eh, we drank it and it was delicious. It was actually my first alcohol of the trip. I saved the rest of my bottle and plan to drink it at another occasion later on. Side note---the bottle was made in Mendoza, Argentina and I plan on visiting Mendoza aka "Wine Country" with my family later on. 

After pizza we rode the crowded subte back home. Crowded enough that a good four people touched my butt. Alllllll part of the BA experience. Got home did some homework, read Twilight, watched the Hills finale (yeah, that's right. I watched it), then had dinner. Around 10:30pm I left with Elizabeth to meet some friends at McD's to then take the colectivo to this bar called Alamo. Its a sports bar that has beer pong on Tuesday nights. Andrew's roommate runs the table so he told us that we'd get it all to our selves. Saweet. yeah, its good to know that the comforts of home are never too far away. So the McD's had its own mini cafe adjacent to el restaurante and served legit ice cream. I thought Bethesda had an upscale McD's but this one put it to shame. When we all finally had everyone at 11pm we found out another friend of ours was having an awful day so we changed our plans and met her at a cafe to help her drink her sorrows away. We took el tren to the bar. You don't need a ticket after 9pm so literally you can just hop on as it passes by. I felt like I was a run away jaja. 

The cafe was called Proxi and we were the only ones there. I tried my friend's Champagne and it was delicious. I said it tasted like Andre and he was like what's that? I explained that its this cheap champagne that girls like to drink. My friend then let Andrew try it and Andrew was like, "oooh this tastes like Andre." bahahah I got a peach smoothy with water (instead of milk. its cheaper with agua). It was surprisingly tasty. My friend John was the only one to get food. He wasn't sure what he order but it looked like a pancake. When they brought it out they drenched it in rum and lit it on fire. John was extremely confused but once the flames were extinguished he ate it. That's called flambe. Thank you Top Chef! After we closed the cafe down we chatted up some local los gatos then headed to a pool bar. The bar was pretty empty. It was called Wrangler bar and it was Texas themed: cow horns, western posters, and cowboy hats galore! I felt right at home. My friend's ordered beer and when they brought it out it was in this huge blender looking thing that had it's own tap. Pretty cool. We played one game of pool for over an hour because we were all awful at it. The host watched us the whole time and I could tell he was getting annoyed because we were so bad jaja. The only reason the game ended was because my friend sunk the 8 ball in lol.

Around 1:50am I decided to call it a night since I had homework to finish AND school at 9:30 the next morning. It felt like a typical Thursday at college. I think that's what threw me off because today I could not believe that it was only Wednesday. I'm so excited because I leave for Igauzu Falls tomorrow. We leave at 7pm Thursday and drive on this really comfortable bus to the falls which is approx a 20 hour trip. The bus has attendants (like flight attendants) who provide us with dinner, breakfast, and our every desire (i wish). How cool is that? So yeah, I won't be posting blogs until I return Sunday night. Enjoy the weekend. I know I will :) chau!!