Uraday

Turns out Uruguay is right across the rio! A three hour cruise on the Buquebus dropped us off in Colonia, the tiniest port town on the Uruguay coast. The hostel was a dream--people from New Zealand, Palonia, Argentina, Holland, England, and Chile were staying there. We made friends with two of the workers right away and they showed us the single three main attractions of Colonial night-life. This included, of course, a karaoke bar where Anneke and i yelled through so many Spanish songs we could hardly speak the next day. We stayed with a girl from London who was traveling the entire world in six months--she was on the last leg of her trip in South America, and we got to hear firsthand the coolest stuff about worldwide train-travel, Tokyo, London schooling, where the best food in the world actually is.... Getting to know friends who work at a hostel is literally one of the best ways to make friends with the world really really fast. We randomly ran into them in Buenos Aires again this next weekend and our little network grew to include friends here, too. ¡Que suerte!

Classes started for real last week, and oh my gosh. The University of Buenos Aires is the most intense hub of political campaigning and craziness. The professors barely get paid a thing, but they teach because they're passionate. The buildings are falling apart and there's hundred-year-old peeling paint on the walls (which doesn't matter because every square inch is covered with political posters), everyone is smoking (even the profs go through a pack in class), toilet paper rolls don't even exist in the bathrooms, and it's pretty common to wait up to an hour for class to start. They are on such a different clock here, i love it. People in the States would be so frustrated with this seemly chaotic system. In Argentina it works, though, because everyone's on the same page about it. And bottom line: the classes are wonderful and extremely hard and walking in there has begun one of the best experiences of my life.

I told Luisa i had Tiramasu ice cream--which by the way is the heavens in a cup--and she asked Did i know what Tiramisu really meant? "Tirar" can mean "to throw," so when reflected onto oneself, Tiramisu means "it throws me upward--" in elation, i guess!

People on the Subte looooove to stare...Not just at me or anything, but at everyone. i felt super uncomfortable until our amazing head coordinator, Carolina, told us there isn't even a word in Castellano "to stare." There's only "looking." This is such a looking culture--that's how the people size each other up on first-impression. 10-second eye contact would be really creeperish in the States. But it's custom here. So, i happily have joined in the "staring" and it's not weird at all. It's a relief to be allowed to have a hay-day on the Sub just staring around, cause i can't take my eyes off these beautiful people anyway. There's also not a word for "snobby" in Castellano. I explained it to my family in many different ways: a "prideful" person, a person who flaunted their money, etc...and they didn't seem to understand it as a set concept either.

I'm sitting here in the kitchen on Saturday afternoon listening to a really badly-dubbed-over movie in Castellano. We stayed out exploring the town (and mostly dancing) last night until 5:00am--late enough so we could ride the subway home as it opened for the early-birds. And we were the ones who went home early!

Everyone here seems to be speaking slower this week...i think that's a good sign. My head's picking up these strange noises a little more easily everyday. Haha it was a mean trick when i arrived a month ago--it was like a different language than i'd learned in all those years of class. The dialect and verb forms between school Spanish and Buenos Aires could be compared to the difference between Ebonics and British English. Thankfully, 4 weeks of inundation has about equaled all that Spanish-schooling and i can understand most all of a lecture at UBA. And at the dinner table, it's already been a big change from when i felt like the deaf Great-Grandma to whom the family threw out a very simple question everyone once in a while before going back to happy chatter amongst themselves. My brain muscles are really sore but i am LOVING every hurdle in learning a new language.