Stabilizing...

So I've noticed a bit of a drop in readership recently. That's sensible enough, considering that my frequency of entries has decreased a fair bit as well. That's fairly easy to explain: it has to do with the increasingly routinized nature of my life here; as the title indicates, things have stabilized a bit. It used to be that pretty much every day had to be filled in some novel way, usually ending up in an "adventure" of some sort. Now that I have a moderately (but still not really) full schedule of classes, my experiences and challenges are more typical of everyday life.

That's not entirely the case, however; I still have three day weekends and a significant amount of free time on the weekdays, and in that free time I still feel obligated to try new things, even with respect to the type of cheap food I eat for lunch. There's so much variety around me that if I do something that I've done before I often feel like I'm missing out. I suppose there's nothing wrong with that except the obvious risk inherent in straying from the known and recognized; but in most of the areas we're talking about here, that's pretty negligible, rarely adding up to much more than a little wasted money. At the moment I feel like saying that the constant stream of novelty can be tiring, but that's just because I'm tired at the moment for completely unrelated reasons. The truth is that most of the time its invigorating.

Routine has I think gained a firm hold in one area of my life (besides classes of course) however. I've tried dozens of coffee shops in this city, and I think I've more or less seen it all: places where you walk to a counter and take your coffee from them there, like in the U.S.; places where you sit down and order and they serve it to you at your table; places where you order at the counter and then they bring it to you at your table; places where they seem to be kind of irritated if you sit down and just order coffee, no food; places where they just give you your café con leche alone; places where they give it to you with a little cookie and a glass of carbonated water (the more common); places where they give you the coffee and milk seperately in metal containers and you get to mix it yourself. So I feel justified in having fixed on a particular coffee shop to while away the hours, at least when I'm in the center. And I feel very good about that.

That said, I'll give you my itinerary for the past week (without unecessary commentary on my part) just to illustrate how variety and stability have come to coexist, at least monday through thursday. Friday through sunday are still total question marks.

Monday: Go to FLACSO a little before Ritmo y Danza class in order to use their computers. Class from 12-3. Then to the center for spanish class at la UBA from 4-6. Skip my 5:15-9:15 psych class at la UCA in order to go to the stage tango finals of the mundial de tango at Luna Park. Arrive home for dinner around 9:30.

Tuesday: Skip rowing practice in order to take full advantage of a rare night of good sleep. Get up at 8:30 and head to cine class at FLACSO from 10-1. Afterwards go to Puerto Madero to row, thus making up for the missed morning practice. Spanish class at la UBA from 4-6. Return home and relax a bit, and before bed begin watching "la antena," a film about which I have to write an essay for cine class, for the third time.

Wednesday: After a fairly leisurely morning routine, walk 10 blocks or so down Túcuman to buy a ticket for the symphony orchestra concert. Go to flacso to use their computers and scanner, and chat a bit with a friend. Head to the center early in order to first watch a bizarre film ("la mujer sin cabeza") by Lucrecia Martel, a directora that we're studying in cine class. Spanish from 4-6.

Thursday: Get up at 6:20 to row in the frigid winds of the Puerto Madero "diques," in preparation for a 400 m regatta in a couple weeks. Spend 2 aggravating, caffeine-deprived hours at la UCA trying to obtain an ID card (and finally meeting with success). After going home to eat more and drink some coffee, return to the center too early and kill the time until spanish class by drinking coffee and eating fruit salad at a mall, and looking at art at the Borges Cultural center. After class from 4-6, kill more time until the 8:30 orchestra concert by eating dulce de leche ice cream and reading the newspaper in a mcdonalds. After the concert rush home, starving, for a 10:30 dinner.

Ok well I don't know what kind of impression all that gives you of my life here, but rest assured, it's over all pretty cool.

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