Autumn’s Adventures

It is raining really hard tonight and for the first time since I arrived here I saw lightning as well.  Despite the rain it is still hot as hell in my bedroom.  I’m finding it hard to go to sleep because of this but also because I am trapped in my room with a mosquito and a really annoying fly.  I hate both of these bugs with all of my being.  Just knowing that they are in the room with me makes me feel dirty and itchy all over.  These bugs are so small yet they seem to occupy so much of my personal space.  It is currently 2am and I am far from falling alseep.  I do enjoy listening to the rain pouring down the side of the house though it isn’t providing much of a breeze and as I lay here suffocating under my sheets with the door wide open and the window wide open I am still sweating profusely cursing the damned insects that are holding me captive in my own bed.  Maybe I’ll get a full hour of sleep tonight. Just maybe…

If there is one thing I love about staying out all night dancing is to be able to watch the sunrise the following morning.

I’m growing tired of my weekend routine.  Every Friday I go to La Peluqueria and every Saturday I go to Akropolis.  Every. Single. Weekend.  I want to change it up a bit but there really aren’t very many options and my friends don’t like many other places in town.   I wish there was more of a variety.  Luckily I am going to break the cycle next weekend because I have to go to Bolivia.  Maybe when I return I will try to find a new place or do something different.

I am a freaking idiot.  These past few days I have been freaking out about going to Bolivia because I thought I needed to go this weekend but I don’t.  I was all worked up about it and completely worried because Gabi #1 said she would go with me but then said she couldn’t anymore and I didn’t have a backup person to go with me.  Only after I begged her to go with me this weekend did I realize that I was a whole week ahead of myself.  On top of that I told my host parents that I was going to move out the following Friday which is not true.  They told me I didn’t have to move out until December 20th so I will probably stay until then.  I finally set everything straight with everyone and I hope I don’t lose my sense of time again because it is really annoying.

They use paper napkins here and I’m not talking about the soft, absorbable paper napkins that are so common in the US.  I’m talking about actual paper. Like something you would write on.  They absorb nothing and are the most awful things ever.  When I have to blow my nose I always have to go to the bathroom to get toilet paper or I have to suffer through blowing my nose into a hard, scratchy square and hope I don’t leave danglers.  When I wipe my hands off after eating a nice greasy sandwich, I always fear I am going to ruin my computer because I don’t trust these napkins.  It is true, the soft napkins do exist here but not in restaurants and cafes.

I also noticed that I always take a deep breath in before I drink something.  I don’t know why I noticed this.  I tried to not take a deep breath in and just drink and it was quite difficult, almost impossible.  I have way too much time on my hands…

In a few weeks I have to go to Bolivia to get my passport stamped for my 3 month expiration date.  I am a bit worried about it because I know that the Bolivians are at war right now and they are quite displeased with any and all Americans.  My friend told me that they had checkpoints throughout the country and they were deporting all American tourists.  I’m not sure how much I believe him because he seemed like a bullshitter.  I’m going to hope for the best.  I have to stay overnight (24 hours) in the country so I’m going to do a lot of shopping.  Gabi #1 is going with me. Hopefully she doesn’t bail.

For dinner tonight I tried two new empanadas – llama meat and goat cheese.  Llama tastes a tad gamey like goat meat.  Not sure how much I like it.  I definitely don’t like goat meat but I did like the goat cheese empanadas.  I think my body is starting to accept all types of weird cheeses.  About 5 months ago I tried a piece of my roommate’s bleu cheese and it tasted like a care bear had sprinkled joy on my tongue.  It was like discovering a new world. My eyes went wide and my mouth begged me to go to Trader Joe’s the next day to buy myself a huge block of this cheese.  After 5 months I’m still very much in love with bleu cheese and my favorite pizza in Argentina has bleu cheese in it.

I went to Jose’s house with Glenda and for about 20 minutes his parent’s looked up the word for “corn on the cob” in castellano.  They literally had 3 or 4 dictionaries out looking up the word.  The reason they were looking up corn on the cob is because they had a bowl full of dried indian corn and they were explaining to me that it came from his father’s province.  I think the word for it is Mazclea but I can’t remember.  At the end of the night they gave me a stalk of corn on the cob as a gift.  It was pretty fabulous and I thoroughly enjoyed Jose’s family because they were really hilarious.  His mom was trying to sell me bra’s and perfume from a Mary Kay type of catalog.  I told her that “mis tetas son pesadas” and we all had a good laugh about it.

The more castellano I learn the more english I forget.  My friends ask me for english words and translations all of the time and usually my response to them is, “I know there is a word for this but I just can’t remember what it is right now.”  This could end up being a dangerous pattern!  Does my brain have room for both languages? I really hope so.

I never realized it until I arrived here but I am really accustomed to living a planned life.  I always had something to do in the States and I was always planning for Friday as early as Monday morning.  Now I am experiencing culture shock.  Nothing here is ever planned unless it is the following four things:
Class, Work, Holidays, Teacher’s Strikes (there is like one a week, seriously)
I never know what I’m doing with my friends until we arrive at our destination.  This causes mini panic attacks for me because I am used to knowing things before I do them so I can mentally prepare for the journey.  For example, I had a birthday dinner to go to to go to around 10:30 at my friend Gabi #2’s house.  Before the dinner I met up with Dani, Seba and Gabi #1 to hang out.  They knew I was going to this dinner so when we all left Gabi #1’s business I was expecting to separate from them and take a taxi to Gabi #2’s house.  I walked with them until we reached Seba’s car at which point I thought we would separate.  None of them said goodbye to me or gave me kisses on the cheek so I took this as a sign that we weren’t separating yet. Hesitantly I got into Seba’s car without knowing where they were heading next or what they were expecting of me.  He drove for a while and I finally realized they were taking me to Gabi #2’s house when we passed a street that I knew was near her house.  Shortly after my realization Seba asked me what her address was.  I don’t know if these type of things are just assumed or if they talked about it before we left and I just didn’t pick up on the conversation.  Either way, I wasn’t part of the conversation but I need not freak out and I need to just trust that my friends will know what’s up and that I am in good hands.

I no longer feel angry or upset when my friends don’t send me messages to go out.  I know they don’t mean to offend me and they expect me to let them know when I want to do something with them.  I have also learned to make multiple groups of friends because you can almost guarantee that one group will bail on your Friday or Saturday night plans.  I am an east coast girl to the very core.  I never knew how much I relied on solid plans and people’s word.  The fast paced life of a constantly filled schedule come so naturally to me.  I never thought it would be so hard to take it slow and just “go where the wind takes you” or in my case, where my friends take me.  It is almost as hard to learn this as it is to learn the language, maybe even harder.

I am so used to expressing myself through spoken language so I find myself in difficult situations when I want to explain something to my friends.  It makes me feel like a different person.  I feel disabled and a little bit stupid (even though I know that I am not).  Now I know what Caroline, the Belgian exchange student in my high school felt like.  I thought she was just shy because she wouldn’t talk for the first few months but after 5 months she started coming out of her shell because she was able to speak more.  I just need patient…