Day 38: The Secreto

Day two with my new classmate, Oliver. It turns out that he was in Santiago, Chile during the earthquake that just happened there. He was out at a club (it was Friday night) and he said that the noise and trembling lasted for about 30 seconds. That is so long, I cannot even begin to imagine how that must have been. He said the electricity was cut almost right away, that people smashed their way out onto the streets; he said he was really worried that the lights and speakers above him would fall down onto the heads of the people. Luckily, where he was living, the walls withstood the majority of the shaking. He described deep cracks in the walls, but no collapses or serious concerns as such.

After school, I hung around the office again because I wanted to talk with Flor about the trip to Mendoza and she had a private English lesson with an Argentinean student. Our plan is that I will go tomorrow with the money to the address given on the program's website and pay for the both of us since it makes much more sense than going separately. I am really excited to be able to visit another part of the country, besides one city. Mendoza is essentially directly to the west, a tad to the north near the boarder with Chile. It is mountainous there and Germán said that with the low annual rainfall, I should have good weather the whole time I am there. We are going to be taking a bus there, a semi cama as they call it where they have reclining seats, but not 'beds.' I have actually heard that the beds can be quite uncomfortable, so the chairs should be fine. The trip includes some hiking, rafting along a gorgeous river, going out one night to a bar or to a club, and to a winery for a tasting among other activites. Now, Argentinean wine is supposed to be quite something, so even though I am not a drinker, I feel I really ought to have the experience. 

I left the school with Paula and we went back to her house in Recoleta and had an amazing time talking in Spanglish and laughing at what things we should choose to say in English so that the people around us in the bus did not think we were crazy....

Anyway... we tried to go sit in the park, but there were mosquitos (and I just had a lunch with Tine who is an MD, by the way who speaks four languages and is now learning Spanish, and she had told me all about this horrible daytime mosquito disease) and I was not interested in playing mosquito Roulette so we went up to her apartment and talked with Andrés.

This evening I ate some yummy fish with Luke, after which I finished up my homework quickly so I could watch the new movie I had been lent by Germán: Los secretos de sus ojos. Now if that title rings a bell, it is because that film just won the Foreign Film Oscar on Sunday. I would definitely recommend the movie, to an adult audience, because of great quality acting, fantastic cinematography, and you can get the DVD with subtitles in English. I watched it with them so that I could follow the plot fully, but even so, I noticed lots that the subtitles skimmed over so I would really like to watch at least parts of it again with subtitles in Spanish to catch the syntax and word choices. A bit about the movie? It is a somehow warm story about a dark topic. It takes place in Buenos Aires and will leave you thinking for long after the credits. My questions to those after seeing the movie would be: What would you have done? What is fair?

Today was slightly cooler, I wore jeans during the day, a first for me, and I was warm in the subway (as always) but it was nice outside. It is supposed to fluctuate a little between a little warmer than today and about the same, but the real factor is the humidity level. Being a sea town, the humidity can rise up into the 90% range with an easterly wind, so it can get pretty thick. 

Well, I keep getting distracted from my writing because I am thinking about the film still, so I will head off to bed to let my subconscious form some personal answers to my questions above.

Chao.