Day 12: The Roller Coaster

Today was a day of ups and downs.

This morning, I took my dirty clothing to the laundromat right across the street, but because of complications we had to scramble to get to school, caught a later subway train, and we were a little late.

In the first lesson, we had a new teacher called Malina, who was very nice, and who presented some new material to us in a wonderfully clear and structured manner. The next class, with Marcelo, was for me my worst class thus far. I felt completely inadequate, I did not understand the reasoning behind multiple answers to problems, and I got quite frustrated. Marcelo said I should not get frustrated because "the material is hard for everyone," but I felt like we have been studying it for two weeks, and the guidelines are very straightforward. I guess I felt like I should have a better grasp on it my now. Anyways, I used the lunch break to cool down, unwind, and realize that I am enjoying learning Spanish, and that I will have bad moments.

The private lesson was great, we started working a bit with some medical terminology, and using imperative command conjugations with advice etc. It was nice to work with anatomical words, because I like that subject, and so it is fun to learn it in a different language. I think it is going to get hard pretty quickly though...

Betty, Judith and I had planned on going to a Murga tonight at the park, a celebration during the time of Carnaval, but we had some complications with the admission. Although the murga is free of charge, you needed to acquire a ticket beforehand so that the government could control the amount of people there. Apparently before this idea was implemented, the crowds were vast and even aggressive. Betty had been told that we could get the tickets starting at 6.00p for the performance at 8.00p, but when we got to the park gate, we were told that the tickets had actually been offered starting at 2.00p and were all gone. So, instead of returning later to see if we could enter after the ticket-holders had been admitted, we decided to go have some ice cream. Fantastic comfort food. Judith treated us to the ice cream, and we sat in the store (that open to the street), and chatted while watching people walking by. As we were sitting there, a man came in and peeled off the price stickers and replaced them with a 1-2 peso increase. We were essentially the last people to purchase ice cream at the old price. How exciting.

I just finished my homework, some of which was confusing because it was so simple, yet I had issues, but I think I got the exercises correct that I had failed during Marcelo's class. So that is nice, of course tomorrow I will know how I really did....

Well, that is about it. I am ready for Saturday, so that I can sleep in and go for a run. Also, I will be able to really read for a good amount of time. For some reason, I always too tired to read at 1.00 in the morning... and also confused as to how on earth it is all of a sudden 1.00 in the morning. I think that my body is so used to eating dinner at around 6.30-7.00p at home that eating at 9.00p+ is throwing my internal clock off track.

Well, this roller coaster of a day is winding down, I am on the final, gentle decent down to the station. Despite all of my emotional fluctuations, I must say that the Argentinean people are consistently friendly people. I have only had contact with one person who was less than happy, helpful, and hospitable.

Chao.