One of the Boys

First off, I'm happy to report that my vertigo seems to have subsided, thanks, I believe, to a treatment I got yesterday. I found a guy named Gustavo, who makes house calls and does auricular treatments similar to acupuncture. First he used a little machine to do an analysis of the points on my ear. He pressed a metal tip into the points and then turned up the electricity on this machine and told me to tell him when I felt the pulsing. Interestingly, on the points having to do with vertigo, my sensitivity was very low.

He then put these little seeds in small bandages on different points on my ear. I've had this before and this is the kind of treatment people get when they want to stop smoking, eating, etc. When I had it before I was supposed to press on the seeds from time to time, but Gustavo told me not to touch them and to keep them on for a week.

I went to a tango class yesterday and to my Italian class today and didn't feel any sign of dizziness or imbalance. I am coming down with a cold or something though, so I canceled my conversation exchange for today and my Spanish lesson for tomorrow and am going to spend the next few days resting and recuperating.

Tango class yesterday was good. It was kind of like a seniors class, which I liked. There was one young German woman there who was there last week, but yesterday was her last day. The other students were all older Argentines and one older American guy who used to live in SF. He doesn't fully particupate all the time and I am not sure why. I like dancing with these older woman who are all on the beginner end of the spectrum. They are a challenge to lead, but it is good for me to get practice dancing with beginners as well as more advanced dancers.

And now to one of the boys....

I got up at 7 today and took a cab to school early so I could do the homework we had from last week. We had to read the 2nd Aesop's fable in this little supplementary book we got along with our Italian book. It was the story of the country mouse and the city mouse, which I didn't actually remember the moral of until I finished reading it. I was in the bar with my cafe con leche and medialunas and had just started reading the story when I heard a loud, familiar voice. I looked up to see Blas at the counter loaded up with two backpacks.

After he got his coffee and medialunas, he came and gave me a kiss and sat down with me. I was kind of sorry because it meant I couldn't do my homework. Not long after he sat down, another student, Matias, came in and sat with us.

When it was just me and Blas we talked about general things like where I am studying tango, why he had so many backpacks (he was returning from Uruguay), etc., but after Matias sat down, the conversation became very straight male. Blas especially, started talking about women. He was teasing me because I am not married or don't have a partner and called me a 'sea wolf'. I am not sure what this animal is, but he said it is like a sea lion. I think what he said was that a sea wolf kind of lays low and waits for an opportunity to pounce on a female. Boy was he reading me wrong! He teased Matias a little and said that there is a girl in the class, Delfina, who smiles every time Matias talks - well, everyone smiles when Matias talks because he is a joker. I was feeling uncomfortable with the conversation, mostly because Blas was assuming I was straight and with such a macho-hetero conversation I felt uncomfortable setting him straight (so to speak). Finally I said I was going up to the room and left them alone, perhaps to continue what they were talking about, or to talk about me.

Class was pretty much the same as usual, except that today Blas started paying more attention the girls in the class. He started teasing my group mate, Natalia, who speaks fluent Portuguese and often speaks Italian words with a Portuguese pronunciation. But he also recognized some of the other, quieter women who spoke up a little more today. He loves looking over at me and saying, "Rishard", and he has started trying to speak English to me too, which honestly, I like since I am never really sure what language is being spoken in class.

I think Arabic was a better choice for me in terms of a foreign language to study here because I am very clear when Spanish is being spoken (which is most of the time) and when we are speaking Arabic. But Italian and Spanish are so close, I am never really sure when anyone in class is speaking Spanish or Italian, and I myself often confuse the two. After class I went to a restaurant for lunch and almost spoke Italian to the waiter. I don't know what language I will study next year when I return. My sabbatical proposal said I'd be studying Italian. I definitely want to continue with the Arabic though and am thinking if I am going to study another romance language, maybe I should learn some Portuguese. I wonder if that will just confuse me more.