I give up.

I give up.

finally

Exams, check. So now I guess I need to sit down and say enough interesting stuff here that you all will forgive me for not saying it sooner. Where to start? actually, to be honest that’s pretty much the only thing that’s been occupying my brain recently. I was supposed to have one exam last week and one this week, but because there was a teacher’s strike at the UBA (which has been happening pretty frequently this semester, not quite sure why), both exams got pushed to this week, on consecutive days… ick. It’s not that the classes are so much more difficult here, it’s just that the first exam always is scary because I can’t ever tell what’s coming up or how the teacher grades, because the exam is pretty much the first thing that gets a grade. Plus, if you do really well on the midterms you don’t have to take finals, so keep your fingers crossed for me.

There’s another strike next week, but this one is a “paro activo”, which I think means that it’s a strike where we still have class. Which doesn’t make any sense at all, really… but anyway, I’m thinking about skipping Thursday’s class and taking a trip out of the city, cause it’s been awhile since I did that and I’m feeling like I could use a break. Especially if pretty scenery and waterfalls are involved, so Iguazu might be on the list. I’ve wanted to go there pretty much ever since I heard that the place existed, so I guess it’s about time. Oh, and speaking of travelling, I’m probably going to be making a couple of changes to my summer plans and spending more time in Brazil and less time in Paraguay and Uruguay. Poor Paraguay, it gets no respect at all — whenever I tell people I’m going there the first thing they always say is “why would you want to do that?” Not that that really affects any of you, unless you just happen to be in the area and want to visit… anyone? anyone? Fine.

Anyway, like I said I’m looking forward to having my life back. At least my independent project that I’m doing has gotten kind of fun, even though I still hate talking spanish on the phone to people I don’t know… the other day I went to interview this guy who runs an association of independent inventors, and it just so happened that about 5 other elderly inventors were there at the time, so I ended up talking to all of them and they were really funny. Not so useful in terms of my project, which is taking a more political/economic approach to intellectual property, but very cool people. The best part was when the director of the association got out FIVE giant binders with pictures and discriptions of their inventions and helpfully explained everything as I flipped through (“this is a new type of bicycle, this is a magnetic bookmark, this is a wire connecter…”). I think they were sort of disappointed that I didn’t have any connections with important American corporations that they could market to, but they were really nice to me anyway. And they gave me 4 magnetic bookmarks and a brochure on the one-handed corkscrew to take home with me.

What else? everything’s normal. My Argentine family is still sort of driving me crazy, but it’s nice to see my host mom again in spite of that (she was in London for a couple of weeks) and the fridge definitely looks less empty since she got back. We were down to mustard and mayonnaise by the last few days of her trip… it’s still Fall here, but luckily not too ugly or cold yet. And yes, I consider that I’ve been here long enough to whine about about any temperature lower than 50 degrees, just like a real Argentine. I’m still trying to work out a way to fit horseback riding into my schedule, without much success so far… and next monday I’m going to visit a class at the UBA Law School (I met the professor this week and she invited Oh, and the White Stripes are coming to BsAs at the end of the month! and if I’m not gone that weekend I’m first in line for tickets. So I guess you could say that everything’s going well, and I’m still having fun, and by the way if you’ve sent me an email recently and I haven’t responded, just know that that’s the next thing on my list, but it might take me a little while to work through the backlog.