B.A. Dia 16: Clowns and Beer Dancing. 2 de junio

Well, today was yet another somewhat uneventful day: Take laundry to get done, class, pick up laundry, dinner, TV with Elsa, blog. Wouldn’t that be a much shorter way of telling you how my day went?

Well, lucky for you faithful readers, I do have a few stories to share about strange-ish things that happened throughout the day.

While my bus to school was stopped at a stoplight, there was a clown on a sidewalk. Yes, it was a random clown with a white face, red painted nose, and large shoes. He walked up to the bus, looked at the window (close to where I was standing) and made this face like he was disgusted with what he saw (no, he was NOT looking at me!) and then proceeded to wipe off an imaginary bug from the window. Then he shook the “bug” in the air and pointed his finger at it and started speaking to it like he was giving him a “talking to” about riding on bus windows or something. I don’t know…but then he threw “the bug” on the ground and stomped on it. Then he looked back at us on the bus and smiled and gave us a thumbs up, as if he saved us from whatever creature happened to be crawling on the window. I have learned to think that anything can happen in Buenos Aires and nothing should surprise me. I mean, no one else on the bus looked surprised. They all kept looking ahead or looking at the clown then looking away as if this were a normal happening on their bus rides to work or school. But I couldn’t look away. It was a clown in the middle of the street! Sigh…only in B.A….or college campuses where much stranger things happen but we always say, “They’re in college” or “We’re in college” so it’s okay that people are running around the oval, drinking a glass of milk, then running around the oval…and they paid to do it… it’s college. That’s what I am starting to think about this city…its B.A. Sigh…

Moving on to class time…our professor was thirty minutes late to class today. What? And we waited that long for him to show up? Well…yeah. I know that in the US (or at least at my home University) if the professor doesn’t show up for fifteen minutes we’re allowed to leave, but we didn’t know if they have that rule here or what. Just as we were starting to pack our stuff up, he comes walking in with…an assistant professor? I guess he was an assistant, I don’t know what else to call him, co-professor maybe? Well, we start talking about the civil war in Argentina in the 1800s between Buenos Aires and the rest of Argentina, and then we were talking about different cities, one of them being Quilmes. We, the students, we a bit thrown off I guess because Quilmes is the number one beer here in Argentina. So the professors explained that it was a town and then, our professor started joking around about the younger professor knowing his drink. He started dancing and pretending to have a drink in his hand and talking about Cervesa. It was SO funny! I mean… I don’t remember if any of my professors have ever danced in class, but I am sure it was not as hilarious as this. Sigh…good times.

Besides that, I had a much better time in this class than I did in that Politics class. This is the Culture and Society class and the professor is just much more interesting and actually writes a lot on the board which helps me a lot! And there is an actual time line to this class…we talked about the 1700s last week, and the 1800s this week. I think he said that we were going to watch a film next week about Rosas (a governor of Argentina that…united the two sides after the civil war? I think that’s right, I’ll learn next week!). Anyways, I understood more and actually felt like I was learning more…and didn’t want to cry every four minutes for the entire class! So yay for having a class I’m interested in that’s teaching me more than just Spanish grammar.

Speaking of other classes, I am going to Expanish tomorrow to talk to Luciana (student coordinator) about my options with this politics class. I am hoping that maybe there is another class at the Expanish School that I can take. I understand that I might not necessarily get school credit for it, but that will be okay. I feel as if freaking out in my politics class every week might not help me further my Spanish knowledge, and I get that maybe it’s a mind over matter thing, but I don’t really want to think that far into it…if that makes sense. I don’t know. We’ll see how the meeting with Luciana goes tomorrow. Worst case scenario is that I’ll have to continue the class and I’ll not make a good grade in it then I’ll just tell OBU that I don’t want that class transferred and it won’t hurt my GPA or anything like that! So that’s not too bad I guess…

I don’t really know the plans for tomorrow yet. Bridget has been talking about going to the Circus that’s in town! I really hope we get to go. She is supposed to figure out where it is and all that, so I’m going to contact her tomorrow about it. If anything, I know we’re going to go shoe shopping (for her, not me…lol) and then try and find this book store that is inside of an old theatre. I dunno, it sounded pretty interesting to us, and I just finished my book yesterday. I know I don’t need more books (and especially don’t want to have to add weight to my suitcases!) but those of you who know me well enough know that it’s really hard for me to NOT buy books if I go into a book store… we’ll see. =)

If Saturday is nice we were talking about having a picnic in a park. Maybe getting a manicure or a massage…yeah, I said that. Manicures here are typically less than 20 pesos (less than $7) and massages are supposedly cheap here too! So we’re definitely going to look into that while we can… I mean, wouldn’t you want to say you got a massage in Buenos Aires?!

Well… I suppose that’s all I’ll share with you for today. But how about I give you some Buenos Aires slang to help you brush up on your Spanish! =)

Bondi, slang for colectivo which is what they call the buses here!

Che, which is their equivalent of what they call each other. For example, we say: Hey, come here! They say: ¡Che, ven aca! This is also helpful when you can’t remember someone’s name… you just call them Che.

Boliche, slang for disco (which they never use). We call it a club. In the states, in every Spanish class I’ve had, they teach us discos or discotecs. If you use that word here, they laugh at you and definitely know you’re not from around these parts. =)

There you go, oh students. I hope you enjoyed your short lunfardo (slang) lesson for the day!

As always, I miss you all and love you!!!