Hoy

As I was about to leave the house this morning, I got a call from Gwen, who was already at the university, telling me that class was cancelled. I only have one class on Wednesdays, but I had a few errands to run.

These errands mainly involved running around the city looking for la lectura (readings) for a few of my classes for the rest of the semester. Unlike Whitman, I cannot show-up to the bookstore with a few hundreds of dollars in cash and leave with everything that I'll have to read for the semester.

For my introducción al arte class, it's fairly simple to get my reading material. I go to the basement of the building to the copy center and tell them what I want copied. I've been buying a few weeks of reading at a time.

For medicina laboral, the notes are put online and there appears to be no further reading. I was having people from the class email me the notes because I didn't have a username or password. Good news- username has been obtained! I just went to a copy center a few blocks from my house to print out the notes for tomorrow's class.

I just found out the theme of my Castellano Mantenimiento class- Música popular urbana en una Argentina de fin de siglo. One third of the class will be devoted to studying Argentine music from the 1960's to present, while the rest of the class will be 1/3 grammar and 1/3 literature. On Tuesday, I shelled out 74 pesos at a copy center to buy a copy of all of the lyrics that we'll be studying this semester. And today I went to our program center where 2 GB of music was waiting for me to burn to CDs.

The class that is driving me up the wall is Argentina en palabras. This class has easily 80 pages of reading a week, but there is absolutely no centralized location where I can find the material. The material is either 1) available for free online 2) will be emailed 3) at the copy center in the basement of the building 4) in a box in the library 5) most easily obtained at a bookstore 6) or the location is still to be determined. I probably spent three hours today and have less than half of the readings in my possession. In any case, I have the 20 poems by Borges for tomorrow sitting in front of me.

Despite not having class, I have not managed to actually do any homework.

I must say I am truly enjoying my time here, and that you might be getting a skewed perspective- seeing how I just blogged about one of the many frustrations of living in a foreign country.

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Update on the recurring theme of monedas. I went to a bank today, handed the teller a 100 peso bill and asked for monedas. I have known that banks will give you 10 pesos in monedas, but banks are only open from 10-3pm. I was pleasantly surprised when she handed me 20 pesos in change. To celebrate, I rode the bus home.

The subte is generally faster than the colectivos and gets me within 10 blocks of where I want to go. The colectivos are less crowded, but require monedas and take longer. It was an hour long bus ride from UCA to my house this afternoon. I got a seat, but it was in the second row. Seat security in this zone is fairly close to zero. Every time an elderly person, expecting mother or mother with young children, or handicapped person gets on the bus, the people in the first few rows give up their seats. Today I just spent the hour debating if the lady or man who just got on the bus looked old enough for me to get up and give them my seat. The conclusion every time was no. Oh the moral dilemma of riding the bus (and the subway as well).

I just took a nice 45 minute nap, and now I'm on to reading some Borges.

Here are a few pics from my trip to the Japanese Garden and Boca this weekend:

Gwen and I making fishy faces in the Jardín japonés.

Emma, Bailee, Gwen, and I posing in the slightly overrated Jardín japonés.

On the street called Caminito in Boca. This is BsAs tourist heaven. Maradona (hand of god) is on the second story balcony.

With Renato and his cousin Santi in front of the Boca Junior stadium.