El Mundo es un Pañuelo

     There is nothing like waking up blurry-eyed from the dreamlike state of a good book to find yourself surrounded by even more books in the renovated theater of El Ateneo. 

El Ateneo

    I wandered in on a lazy Sunday and lucked out with a leather chair on the third floor balcony overlooking rows and rows of books and the cafe that rests on the center stage. I opened Water for the Elephants and left the world of Buenos Aires for a magical two hours as I delved into the circus. Eventually, the novel came to an end and I wandered the rows of books as my sleepiness burned off. I have been trying to make a Bucket List for my time here so I browsed a slim book on Buenos Aires taking note of the famous cafes and tango bars. So far some tasks on the list include attending a Polo Match, cheering emotionally at a soccer game, and learning how to tango. The latter is a bit iffy, it seems that most people, me included, come here with idea that everyone in Argentina knows how to tango; I think I have met two people from here who have actually semi mastered the dance steps. 

     Before drifting home I ended up buying a Spanish Spanish dictionary, I figure I will learn more words that way? Hopefully? As far as the improvement of my Castellano goes, I feel like I have hit a bit of a plateau. I have learned a lot of the everyday slang and the colloquial phrases and apart from the game of Pictionary we played yesterday with the guys, the pages in my vocabulary notebook have not been filling up as rapidly as I would like. However, now that classes have actually commenced, the unfamiliar words have started to trickle in; I have no doubt that the flooding will begin momentarily. 

     With my fellow students from the US gone on grand adventures to the unknown for the long weekend, I walked home expecting a relaxing (which was starting to turn into boring) evening, when I got a message from Jazmín asking if I wanted to come over for dinner. Within ten minutes I was on the bus headed to her homey apartment for some delicious Milanesa (breaded meat) followed by a pajama party sleepover, which included some scrumpcious chocolate pudding and the highly recommended Argentinean movie Nueve Reinas.

Pajama Party

   Monday meant class and after a delicious breakfast, and lunch, made once again by chef Jazmín, I was off to European Art History which I am afraid to say was rather dull. The professor was as animated as the two dimensional prehistoric stick figures he was lecturing about. The literature concentration that I am enrolled in allows room for two other classes in any field, and I have ended up with art history and Argentinian History. The History professor is a kick, he lectures without notes and meanders with a focus that often leads to insightful tangents. Today as he moved from behind his desk to then sit on it, he enlightened us on the time that he did the same in front of 80 students and it toppled over and laid him on his back, his legs sticking straight up in the air and his dress pants scrunched by gravity revealing his sock covered ankles.

Yesterday I sat captivated by another professor in my Argentinean Literature class. He is an author of sorts, and guided us through poems after giving us dating advice while in Argentina which included for the girls, that we not break any Argentinean hearts, and for the boys not to get theirs broken. I am not usually one who jumps in joy for poesy, but the way he toured the lines was great fun. First off he read through the poem, then asked that we, a group of foreigners from abroad programs from around the globe, ask him the definition of any and all words we did not know, the picture translation of which he then drew on the chalk board. Turns out he is quite the artist. His images erased the fuzzy world that my mind had created and introduced a completely new paradigm.

     Also, I nearly left out one of the best parts of that class. Before reading through the texts, and just before he started talking about the modernization of Buenos Aires and how in a big city there is an element of anonymity because one can walk the streets and not run into anyone familiar etc., in walks Jack Casey, a friend from my first year at Boston College. I hadn't seen him since I ran into him in the dinning hall when I visited last spring. I sat still in my chair for a second as my mind processed what exactly was going on. Jack and I had History and Spanish together freshmen year, and now, a year and a half later in another hemisphere we would be colleagues once again. 

Small world. Or, as they say here: el mundo es un pañuelo.

(the world is a handkerchief).