Something new every day

Wow, it's been two weeks since I got here. Time is flying by.

Today I got up late because we were out late. I took the subte to school (subway) and decided to try a different place for lunch. I had spotted a small diner just across the street from school and thought I'd try it. I've been eating at a place called Las Ciencias (the Sciences), which is located near some medical school/hospital. It's a nice place and they have a daily menu. But it's a little bit of a walk from school and sometimes we have to rush (Anna has been meeting me there almost every day) because we forget how far it is.

Today I took a different subway line, explored the neighborhood near school a little because I walked down different streets and tried this new restaurant. I liked it. It had an old, funky sort of feel, including the waiter, who was old and funky, and the bathrooms, which were definitely F-U-N-K-Y.

Class was good. I spoke to Marcela and told her I thought I should move down to level 5. She said she thought I was fine in level 6. I told her I didn't think I had enough opportunities to talk. She told me she thought I talked plenty. I noticed a difference today. When I spoke, the other students didn't interrupt me. I felt more confident speaking up. And, I liked what we did. We had homework I understood (and I did it) and we are reading this short story, which is a mystery. Even though I read what we were supposed to read, I didn't understand enough to participate fully in the discussion, but the discussion helped me understand some things. The thing I liked best about the class was that I felt like we were on track and going somewhere, rather than blowing in the wind. At the end of class, after our break, we played a little game, which was fun. Marcela is really fun - I like her class.

After class, Mike, Anna, and I decided we were going to walk to Avenida Santa Fe to do some shopping. We also decided we would walk down a different street to explore our neighborhood a little. It was fun. On the way, we came across this magnificent building, which I saw from the taxi one day when I was going to meet Larry and the taxi driver went in the wrong direction. Today we approached it from the back, and it was incredible. We didn't know what it was, so we walked around to the front and tried to identify it. I thought it was the medical school, or a library or something. We went up the stairs and went inside, and found it was not as ornate inside as it was outside, but the people who were coming out told us it was open from 9-1 and there was a museum in the basement (at least that's what we thought we understood). So, we walked around the other side to see if there was some identifying feature. I suggested to Anna that we ask someone what it was to practice our Spanish. We looked for someone who was not in a hurry. There was an older woman coming out of the building and a guy standing outside of the door. I approached the older woman and Anna and Mike went up the guy standing outside.

The woman I spoke to said it was "AYSA", and showed me an envelope with AYSA written on it. I didn't know what that meant. I said it was a beautiful building. She agreed. She told me we could go inside. She then asked where I was from. When I told her, she said something to the effect that we were lucky to be from such a good country (I forget her exact words) - she was really great. Just the kind of person I'd like to get into a conversation with -she was animated and no-nonsense. I'm sure she would have talked about anything with me had I asked.

I walked up to Anna and Mike who were talking to this guy wearing a long black coat. He spoke without any expression, stone faced and serious, kind of like the waiters at La Ciencias. One day when we were there, Anna noticed that they had boiled vegetables on the menu. She asked the waiter, in her best Spanish, "Are the boiled vegetables good?" - he shrugged, and said, "sure, if you like boiled vegetables". After she finished eating, I laughed, repeating what the waiter said. She said, "You know, he was right - they were boiled vegetables". The whole exchange was very direct and no nonsense. Anyway, that's what this guy that they were talking to was like. And he said something like, "If you want to go inside, go in", with the same matter-of-fact expressionless expression.

So we went inside. And it turned out to be the water department, where you pay your water bill. It was very bureaucratic looking. But there were also pictures of the building, architectural drawings, and some examples of the terra cotta that decorated the building, which was made in England, numbered and then assembled on the building like a jigsaw puzzle. The building is really fabulous and pictures just can't do it justice. Apparently, what the museum is is an exhibit that explains how water is managed in Buenos Aires. We'll have to check it out and I want to go back and take some photos (didn't bring my camera yesterday, so the picture here is from the web).

Tonight, school sponsored something called a peña, which is some sort of show of folk music in a small bar. They apparently got this little bar pretty far out of the center of town. We met there, and there was a small stage. Different musicians took turns performing different kinds of music. The first musician sang some tango songs, the 2nd group did some songs from Northern Argentina and some samba, and the third guy, was some sort of comedian, whose humor we didn't understand. It was cute, but I think would have been more fun if we were there with Argentines, who were used to that kind of entertainment. I was glad to see a lot of the Chinese students turned out. Unfortunately, a lot of the American kids who are in my group, didn't show up. We drank some bad wine, had a pizza and french fries, and finally when Larry's cousin, Diane, couldn't take it anymore, we left.

I like the idea of trying to do something new every day - whether it is a different restaurant, or walking down a different street. It seems like this city would have something different to show me every day for at least a year. I think I can try to find one new thing every day for the next month and a half.