penguins

This doesn’t have anything to do with anything, except that in my opinion, the fact that penguins have to go through the metal detectors is a pretty sad tribute to how paranoid we’ve become…
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/slideshow/4402056/detail.html?qs=;s=1;w=320

Real post coming very soon, I promise.

All kinds of classes

NOTE: This posting is primarily aimed at the family, but if any of you people who are currently in school want to hear still more about school stuff, go ahead.

Since I am now between 3 and 6 weeks into the semester (depending on which subject we’re talking about) and have midterms (eeww) just a couple of weeks away, I guess it’s time to talk about my classes for this semester. As some of you know already, I ended up taking 2 UBA classes… after a long struggle, I finally decided to drop Information Economy and take Latin American History instead (okay, the struggle wasn’t quite as bad as I just made it sound, and anyway I still go to some of the Information Economy lectures). I’m enjoying the history, even though it’s strange to take a history course that’s all theory with barely any actual dates. My other class is Right to Information, which I mostly love and would love even more if the reading didn’t consist entirely of extremely dense, small-font case law. But I guess nothing’s perfect, and I do have an excellent TA who explains most of the material very carefully… and I occasionally sneak out my spanish dictionary to hunt for legal terms when no one’s looking.

Getting to class involves walking 8 blocks, a bus ride of 20-30 minutes (depending on traffic), and then another 6 or 7 blocks walking on the other end. Last semester I managed to schedule all my classes in chunks, with 4 hours of class one day and 4 hours the next. Unfortunately, this semester, I wasn’t nearly as smart/lucky. I don’t have the same schedule on any two weekdays, and I also don’t have any consecutive classes in the same building. Which means that a) I’m always a little worried that I’ll accidentally end up in the wrong building, or the right building at the wrong time, and b) I spend a lot of time on public transportation.

Not all of that class time that I just mentioned is UBA. I also have Portuguese twice a week, which is fun and so far pretty easy (we’re moving slooooowly, but that’s okay with me) and the rest of my credits are taken care of with the independent research project that I’m doing on intellectual property rights in Argentina. At this point, the project mostly consists of me spending time reading books, even more time trying to hunt down other obscure or out-of-print books, and even more time trying to hunt down obscure-but-important-and-very-busy people to try to get them to talk to me. I listed those jobs in decreasing order of success, by the way.

And just to get all of the class talk out of the way at once, I’ll mention that I just finished filling out my registration form for Middlebury for Fall semester. As usual, confusing, irritating, and full of fun complications involving course prerequesites and approvals, independent projects, and distribution requirements. Luckily, the thesis part seems okay, and that’s the only really important bit — I’m not even going to bother telling you which courses I signed up for because I have no doubt that almost all of them will change once I get back to campus.

names

Thursday, 12:30. Hipólito Yrigoyen 1482 (a.k.a. Palacio del Senado)

Hipólito Yrigoyen was the first Radical president of Argentina–he served from 1916-1922 and again from 1928 until the military coup of 1930. Getting 12 straight years of democratic government was a pretty big deal for Argentina at that point, and unfortunately didn’t happen again until almost 60 years later. Random Argentine history.

Grace Armstrong.

I always thought I got pretty lucky with my name. Except for that phase that I went through in 5th grade where I changed the spelling every week, I’ve never had trouble with people going “what?” when I introduce myself or “excuse me, could you repeat that more slowly” when I order things over the phone. Really, the name is about as basic as it gets. Or so I thought until I came here and became one of those people who answers to pretty much anything, because they just can’t be bothered to spend half the conversation explaining their “weird” name.

Case in point. My visit to the Senate yesterday. Everyone visiting the Palacio who doesn’t have a special pass has to stop in at Reception, explain their business, and wait while the secretary calls up to make sure they’re really expected and then prints out a day pass. Last semester, I got to know most of the receptionists while I was waiting for my official pass to be approved, but this time around I didn’t recognize the lady at the desk. Ohhhh, name confusion, here it comes.

–Name?
–Grace
–Gris?
–Graaace
–Grease?
–GrACE
–Chris?
–Ummm…

She calls up to my supervisor’s office.
–Hi Adela, there’s a girl named Chris here to see Leandro. Chris. Yeah (pause). She doesn’t speak very good Spanish.
(Excuse me, I’m standing RIGHT HERE. A real treasure, this one). She gets off the phone.
–So, how do you spell your name?

Okay, normally people are nicer about it than that. But I’m not joking, living in Argentina and having my name is the equivalent of living in the states and having one of those Slovakian names where the letters “jzvxqkywfhpr” somehow combine to form the syllable “vich”. It’s one of those names that I have to spell 4 times on the phone with the bus company, but when I go to pick up my ticket, there will still be an extra S or a missing R.

On the bright side, it can sometimes be an icebreaker–especially since once the other person has figured out my name we’ve usually been talking long enough to be well past any initial awkwardness. Or, for example, in class. For example, on the first day of my Right to Information class this semester, I wasn’t on the class list. At the end of roll call, the professor asked me for my name.

–Grace
–Chris?
–GrACE. Like Graciela, but in English.
–Oh, okay.
(pause)
–Last name?
–Armstrong
–What?
–Armstrong.

By this time, a few of the kids in the class have already gotten it and are trying to get the professor’s attention to explain. I was expecting problems, so I spell it, slowly. After I spell it, the professor picks up on it also. It’s funny to watch people’s faces light up as they make the connection. Armstrong. Like Lance. Like Neil. Like Louis.

–Oh, ARMstrong! Like the astronaut.
–yep
–Any relation?
–No, sorry…

By now, the whole class is pretty much laughing. Some of the other students chime in with the obligatory Louis Armstrong-Lance Armstrong comments, and then things go back to normal. It’s pretty embarassing. But I guess I don’t have to worry about being just another face in the crowd…

I mentioned this to my host mom the other day. She commiserated fully, then asked,

–Armstrong, right? A-M-S-T-R-O-N?

I have been living with the family for 8 months.

Monday

Okay, I guess after spending the better part of the year being smug about having a lot of extra summer, it’s finally time for me to start being jealous about the seasons up there in the north — it’s getting very obvious that winter’s on the way in argentina. And by winter, i mean rain… which, oh wait, has already arrived. The first major episode was last Monday: it rained pretty steadily all day, then stopped (Grace: “oh good, I don’t have to bring my umbrella with me to the restaurant”)… for half an hour — just long enough for me to get nice and far away from my house, without rain gear — before it started pouring (Grace: “oops.” People on the street: “oh you poor child.”). My first thought was to wait out the rain, but within 20 minutes the “puddles” covered the entire street, and after 30, the fast-flowing water in the gutters was up to my knees. So I ran/waded for it, got soaked to the skin, laughed at by the restaurant guard… but obviously didn’t learn my lesson, because 3 days later, I did exactly the same thing on the way to class. sigh. Welcome to autumn, I guess.

As I feared, it’s getting harder and harder to keep writing here, mostly because I have more to do now, but also because there seems to be less breaking news. Especially since I’m having a lot fewer of those “what the heck?” moments about the culture — it’s amazing how much I’ve gotten used to living in the city and the Argentine way of doing things. Which is not to say that there aren’t weird moments, just that I deal with them better. And I’m starting to wonder what it’s going to feel like, now that this weird has become normal, to go back to the different weirdness of the States next fall. Will I miss the mullets? The political flyers and constant interruptions to class at the UBA? Being able to complain about how cold it is if the temperature drops below 55? At dinner last night with my host family, we realized that I’ve been here exactly 8 months (actually, 8 months today) which is crazy. How can I be almost 2/3 done already?

One thing I’m definitely going to miss is the prices. As in, everything costs half or 2/3 what it would in the States (the exchange rate is about 3 pesos to the dollar, but prices are higher so that’s what it comes out to). Food, especially, is SO reasonable — well, except for those fancy imported foods… like peanut butter. Even McDonald’s will probably seem overpriced. The problem with all that, I guess, is that there’s a tendency to treat pesos like Monopoly money. As in, “oh, but in the States [fill in the blank] would be so much more expensive… I’ll buy 3.” Not helping ANYTHING is the fact that I’ve been losing things right and left this month, first the card, then the cellphone — gah! Must be a Jyotish thing (ignore that if you’re not from Fairfield).

Oooookay, that’s enough for this morning. Happy Monday!