que calor! this week has been awful. supposably it's going to storm tonight. hopefully that will cool things off.
final exam for Level 4 in spanish class. i got a 95 on the written....and an 80 on the oral!! somebody has to practice speaking spanish. hay que hablar mas, raquel.

i was just shopping....even though i'm so sweaty and hot that i hate to try stuff on. i bought a cute white skirt, then i needed white underwear to match. apparently, you can't try on underwear here, OR return it if it doesn't fit. and underwear is one size fits all! who is that helping. stupid system. stupid hot country. i'm going home to get in the pool. i think steam is going to rise from the pool when i get in.

i introduced allie from queens and brian from queens....they didn't like each other. they both said to me that the other person was just the type of queens resident that they were trying to escape from in argentina. win some, lose some, i guess.

hot! really hot! this week is bad. it's like 95 or something, stupid celsius thermometer. all i want to do is get in the pool. i sit in spanish class and sweat trickles down my back. i just want to take off all my clothes. can't sleep at night. and i'm gripped with an intense thirst all the time. but that might be because i drink 3 cups of coffee per day, wine at night and not nearly enough water!
now i know why all porteños go to the beach in the summer. on the local tv news this weekend were stories about "the ones who stayed", like what porteños are doing here in the city.
yesterday in aerobics the a.c. was broken. we were all very sweaty but it was fun. that's a place where you're supposed to be sweaty. on the way home i stopped at all the fruit and veg. stands for figs, but couldn't find any. mmmm loves me some figs.

sup yo. tanto tiempo! been hanging with brazilians and learning spanish.
i am still thrilled to be here, still pinching myself after four months. i love walking down the street knowing that once i was lost on this same street and asking for help, now i give directions to people that stop and ask me in spanish.
today i was at home and heard a roar go up from the other apartments in my building, and horns on the street, and general pandemonium all around the city....turned on the tv and saw that argentina had just scored a goal against paraguay. i love that! 5 minutes later, another roar....another goal. makes me smile.
eliza is back from traveling, she went to missiones. she rented an apt. in belgrano with allie from queens (who i am going to set up with brian from queens! stay tuned for updates). and she kindly passed along her cold to me....thanks man!
i joined a gym near my house. i've been going to this class, it's called BodyAttack or BodyCombat or something. really hard, with THE funnest teacher. she's pregnant and can still kick my ass in aerobics. she has different routines for all the songs. sometimes she puts on the strobe light. she calls me "rachel" which i hate (uh, it's "raquel" ok) and she tells me when i'm doing the steps wrong. she's impressed with how many push-ups i can do. yeah boot camp!
i've been teaching an english class at the place where i volunteer. i have three students, jews who are preparing to emigrate. mostly it's conversation. they are fairly advanced. also i don't really know how to teach english, but i can make great conversation! one of them is a speech therapist moving to new york. she is deciding between forest hills queens and hempstead long island. i did some Internet research and put together some articles for her talking about both communities, and we read them in class. we talk all about new york for 2 hours, it makes me so nostalgic for new york! they're jews, but i still have to explain to them what a bagel is! i told them, if there's one thing that any american knows about they typical jew, it's that they eat bagels.
i've been meeting with people from the buenos aires herald, the english daily. yesterday i met with the editor. maybe i will do some writing for them. i told the editor that i wanted to learn copy-editing. he said they need some help in sports. i said, that would be great....right up my alley (?)
next week is the last week of my 3 hr. per day spanish class. i can't bear the thought of saying goodbye to martin. we are reading a movie script and will see the movie on tuesday, it's called un lugar en el mundo. the first thing i've ever read in spanish - i really enjoy it! i mean, it's boring, it's about sheep farmers, but i like reading in spanish!
i ate my first fresh fig last week. it was delicious, but it made my tongue tingly. is that normal?

this month in spanish class, the brazilians have taken over the school. they are in all the classes, plus there are special classes of spanish just for brazilians. they travel in groups, they always smell like hall's because they eat them like candy. they go out every night and it's hard not to go out with them. to me they're the most fun people in the world.
there's a brazilian disco here that has been on my list to check out for a while. to go accompanied by a bunch of scantily clad, mentholated brazilians, well it's more than my wildest dreams.

yesterday i went to chinatown with edgardo and allie-from-queens. we found bubble tea in buenos aires! above one of the supermarkets is a cafeteria that sells those rice packets in banana leaves, noodle soups and other asian take-out delicacies. edgardo thought it was about the weirdest thing he'd ever seen, but to his credit he tried everything we got. including the dumplings, which they call "empanadas de china."

the movie scene is so bad here right now that i'm actually looking forward to mona lisa smile coming out this weekend. anybody care to share a review?

i'm back in spanish class this week, 3 hours a day every day. oooh and i love it! i did really well in my other class, 93 on both written and oral tests. i decided to sign up again with my same school even though it is terribly expensive. the monthly tuition is more than most argentinians' monthly salary. there's a school that is a third of the price, but they didn't have the class i wanted this month, because it's summer and very slow here. and they took so long to get their act together, i just signed up for the other school. it's worth it to me. the teacher is really good. and there are just 3 of us in the class. and since it's the next level (i'm in level 4 now, there are 6), it's a direct extension of what i learned before. i'm building on it people, i'm building.
the teacher, martin, who is cute and short with buddy holly glasses and who i might have a tiny crush on, is really good, really tough on us, and makes us write with all the accents. ugh which i do not know how to do. i can't spell in spanish either. but he has a lot of energy and makes class really fun. we read the newspaper, then we write headlines to match photos, and write articles, and paste them all into our own little newspaper. we even made a cartoon! it was about vicios. that means vices.
yesterday we read about a famous person, one paragraph at a time until we guessed who it was. then we had to write our own series of paragraphs and read them until our classmates guessed who it was. i wrote about elian gonzales and only Martin guessed it. He wrote about Carlos Gardel and only I guessed it. we obviously have a special connection.
anyway i couldn't think of a better way to spend an afternoon than learning a language, i really enjoy it. and i'm good at it.

god i miss my IPOD. why did i sell that thing? i still have with me the american dollars i was given for it...and i'd much rather have it back. i miss my cell phone and always reach for it when i hear a cell phone ring near me, but the IPOD leaves the bigger hole in my life. especially when i'm walking around my neighborhood. singing to myself. or sometimes talking to myself.

eliza and i saw Realmente Amor (Love Actually) this week. it was good! you know, it's hard to know what movies to see when you don't see commercials for them on tv and can't read the reviews. living here has been an exercise in taking myself out of the constant stream of 'what to think' that comes from the media. it's funny, in the supermarket, or shopping for clothes, or buying anything really, i have no knowledge on what brands to buy. i don't know which are the fancy brands and which are generic. my only clues are how much they cost, and that can be misleading.
also i hadn't realized how in the US, there are food advertisements virtually everywhere. and in argentina, people aren't nearly as obsessed with food and snacking and soft drinks etc, and they're not fed a constant diet of candy ads. i hadn't even realized how omnipresent these ads are in the US until eliza mentioned it. she was an exchange student for a year in michigan, and said she gained 20 lbs when she was there.
anyway what was i talking about? realmente amor. watching it has nearly restored my faith in love! sure it's hokey. but it's the holidays. what's wrong with a little hoke.