How did this week fit into just one week?

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So right now I'm in the midst of one of those situations where you feel like a given segment of time has passed at lightning speed, but at the same time like it lasted 20 times longer than it actually did. The particular segment of time in question currently is the past week. I'm not going to be able to talk about all of it, and I might give certain things attention disproportionate to their interestingness, but nothing nor no-one is perfect supongo. Supongo is spanish for "I supppose," in case you couldn't guess. I have just gotten into the habit of saying it, I suppose because it's versatile and sounds kind of cool and exotic, like sort of african or something.

Moving right along, then...

So I'm going to start last week at last sunday, rightly so I guess. The last thing I did last sunday was go to this really interesting documentary at the MALBA (modern art museum) called "Rastrojero," which was all about this type of car by the same name and the factor in Córdoba (a large argentine city) that manufactured them, as well as other types of car, fords among them. The rastrojero was a big deal because it was designed and manufactured entirely in argentina and by argentines, and hence was a symbol of argentina as an industrial power and such. This all began in the 50s, during the Perónist era, and so the car also had sort of a connotation of egalitarianism. The film basically traced the history of this particular factory and company until its demise in the early 80s during the military dictatorship, and showed how all the various military coups, nationalizations, reprivatizations, liquidiations, etc. that took place in the intervening decades effected it, generally for the worse. So it was just kind of an interesting way to learn about argentine history.

When I got back that night Ricardo and Raquel had just returned from "the club," a place in the country where they go frequently on sundays when the weather is nice and, from what I can tell, basically just while away the afternoon eating asado. Luckily for me, they had brought some back, prepared by Ricardo himself, and so for dinenr that night I feasted on chorizo, morcizo, and huesos (bones) de carne. This of course occassioned yet another of many lessons from Ricardo, this concerning the proper way to eat the huesos: not with a knife and fork, of course, but with one's hands. In his fervor he even proposed to me the tactic of scraping the excessive scraps of meat and fat from the bone with one's fork, but as Raquel interjected, that's very "de campo." Needless to say there were leftovers for lunch the following day, and (also needless to say) everyone in my Ritmo y Danza class was literally green with envy.

So that covers the last few hours of sunday. I'll have to be more terse if I want to make it all the way to today I suppose.

So after another of many sleepless nights I staggered exhaustedly through monday, rising early to finally obtain my coveted visa from migraciones and then dazedly but successfully making it through my 7 or so hours of class. In ritmo y danza it appears that I have in fact retained in my memory some of the rudiments of tango, and in psych we learned about delirium and dementia (by the end of which I was starting to feel a bit delirious myself). My pysch class is teriffic- I have a very good professor who's a hospital psychiatrist and gives smashing lectures, but I couldn't help but be a bit annoyed this time at the lack of rigidity in the scheduling of assignments and readings, which without going into boring detail makes me slightly worried that I'm going to fail the class through sheer negligence of certain things but is also good in that it will foster more independence, I suppose.

Anyway this exhausting day was the last straw and I finally succumbed to the temptation to purchase melatonin as a sleep aid. The good news: it's working. The bad news: I have to rely on stupid pills in order to sleep. In any case though, they're cheap and honestly I think if I kick the habit of tomaring café in the afternoons I should be fine.

Tuesday I woke up from a glorious sleep and had a glorious rowing practice, after which I attended an absolutely spectacular film class, during which we watched part of a very interesting film and learned about "Platón" and "artistóteles." Also we turned in what I consider to be the first real essay I've written here, hence making me feel at least semi-like I'm actually going to school. That afternoon after stressing out a bit about how to fill the spare time I had I finally made it through to my 4 pm spanish class, after which I went to this really cool restaurant near my home that's filled with university students and drank a licuado, which is essentially a smoothie (although there's some barely tangible difference, I know it).

Wednesdays are perhaps my most relaxing day of the entire week, because I only have a 2 hour spanish class on these days, yet they're not during the weekend and hence I don't feel like I have to plan some really neato exciting thing to do. Plus I've discovered this program that offers sincerely good free concerts every wednesday afternoon at some of the city's best theatres, such as the amazing coliseo (of which pictures will soon be available) and the san martín. Today it was the latter, and I had a front row seat to watch this really incredible austrian string quartet play a lot of violent passionate music (during the schubert piece this woman broke her violin string so they had to start over. Not much else of note happened that day (although I did consume some unbelievable empanadas). So I went to bed fairly early for rowing the following morning, after which I finally found time to visit el centro Islamico. I saw this several weeks ago (it's a very impressive vaguely modernistic mosque complex) and was intrigued by the fact that visits were only allowed tuesdays and thursdays at noon. So I took the bus over and got there a little early. I passed the intervening time at this giant fred meyer-like department store next door, which (perhaps sadly) made me really homesick. One difference though: in Vancouver they don't make you tape a big plastic bag over your bookbag to prevent you from shoplifting. So while I was there I bought some delicious granola cereal that accompanied me as I waited (yes, extraneous detail, I know). The tour was somewhat interesting, especially as I had never been inside a mosque before. I suppose I was expecting it to be a bit more mysterious. In any case, we had a very interesting and charismatic (and zealous) tour guide, and I took away free of charge some evangelical literature, which ought to be a novel way to hone my language skills I suppose.

So after spanish that same day I was kind of despondent because I didn't know how to fill the 3 hours between the end of class at 6 and dinner at 9. By a strange stroke of luck, however, I ran into some friends at flacso (where I had gone to use the internet) and ended up going to a lovely bar called Mar Azul with them, where we all relaxed with a liter of quilmes while two of us listened to the third rant (intelligently) about the economic crisis. I skipped home chipper and ready for a satifying dinner, and Raquel of course did not disappoint. Dinner was kind of funny because Claudia (one of their daughters) was visiting with her husband Hernán and at one point everyone started telling jokes. I didn't get any of the jokes, usually because the person telling it was laughing too hard as he/she said the punchline for me to be able to understand. But it was funny for some reason nonetheless.

Yeah I forgot to mention I enjoyed some pretty pleasant dinners this week besides that one. On tuesday Raquel and Ricardo's son Andres, also quite a character, was visiting with his novia Nati, and that was pleasant mostly because of how amusing Andrés is. Wednesday was pleasant because I had a long conversation with Raquel where I explained unitarian universalism to her and we talked about religion por lo general. Friday was nice because their other daughter, Deborah, was visiting with her husband Marcelo and their absurdly adorable 3-4 year old Cindy as well as their 6 week-old Sharon. It kind of freaked me out to see how stressed out and tired they seemed to be, but there were also some touching maternal, paternal, grand-maternal and grand-paternal moments. And it bears repeating that Cindy is utterly adorable. So anyway, congratulations Mom and Dad for dealing with a similar type of situation with my sister and I.

That reminds me of something else I was thinking about recently. This experience has been cool not only in exposing me to the culture and language of argentina, but in ways that don't really have anything to do with argentina at all. This situation isn't just like my life at home, except in argentina, after all. What I mean is, it's also been cool to experience living in a gigantic city and in a different type of family situation. It's impossible to calculate how much at this and perhaps any point, but I can say all of this has matured me quite a bit.

So back to thursay. Yeah, that's over with. Friday I had to get up fairly early, despite it being a free day, because I had agreed to go to this secondary school and talk to (and be interrogated by) some students there. I was a bit nervous before hand because, you know, talking, but it turned out to be really easy and pleasant, and for some reason the kids were totally enamored with us. It was a bit of a shock to realize that I'm actually only a year older than most of them. Anyway the truth is that the experience was really just a gigantic ego boost. I just came to realize, I suppose, yeah: I am awesome and wonderful.

So afterwards it was also great because we went out to breakfast with Meli, the flacso person who had accompanied us (and whose secondary school we had visited) and ate delicious pastries and drank coffee on flacso's monedas. Then I spent the rest of the day going to the ballet and this weird pseudo-opera performance that I'm getting too tired to describe. Then at the end of the day I was too tired from my early awakening to go to Amerika as I had planned. Amerika is a gay club of which I've become a card-carrying member. I'll deliberately leave that without further explanation.

Okay so that's enough for now!

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