Me "Gustar Presente" Baires

Chicos y chicas,

Orientation's new highlight came with a splash of sweet irony. Program Director Mario Cantarini intended to dissuade us from settling on using mediocre Spanish when in fact – as a native speaker – it made me want to speak worse. During yesterday's lecture on Spanish he told us about a 60-year-old student he had while he was teaching Spanish in Britain. This old Brit decided that even though learning Spanish was a sound business decision, his time was too valuable to be wasted on something as meaningless as verb-tenses. Instead, he would learn the infinitives and work and take it from there. Allow me to explain his new dialect of Spanish-express: "Ayer 'beber pasado' whiskey y hoy yo 'sentir presente' mal." Good job, ol' chap. I could learn a lot from this man. I may have never met him, but something tells me we would get along.

The rest of orientation thus far has been fairly dull. Attached are the notes I took exclusively – mind you – during the aforementioned Lecture on Spanish (don't adjust your screen, that was not a typo). Today I had to survey 3 Argentinians to practice my communication skills in Spanish. Fan-tas-ti-coe. But that was not until after we had a lecture on culture shock. They tell me it was good. I told them so was my nap.

Between a Guatemalan called Daniel and I, we've been trying to tag team this situation and try to get out of the mandatory Spanish classes throughout the semester. (Now, let the record show that this gentleman's Comilla-ness is yet to be determined. He has several symptoms that make me doubt him, particularly his use of 'umm' instead of the 'emm' when speaking Spanish. More on that later.) He talked to a lady at Butler University, Cantarini's boss's boss, who said if we scored well enough on the written exam we had last week we could be exempt from the course. She also mentioned it had never happened. Sounds like chasing rainbows to me. We never get to see for ourselves how well we did and 'well enough' is a rather discretionary term. The whole thing is moot anyway because the COPA people said that it's out of the question. Rules are rules was the explanation they provided; how very 3rd-world-country of them. Way to keep it real.

So I guess on that front, the forecast is looking grim: partially cloudy with scattered shit-storms.

Nonetheless, Baires continues to impress. I went to MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de BA) on Sunday with Paula and a gringa Kelsey. This activity was good; the one that followed was not. I got duped into having lunch at the mall nearby with them. At 5 pm, the prospects of having the day's first meal clouded my judgement and made me ignore most mall's main attraction: stores. Lots and lots and lots of stores. The whole ordeal was very disorienting. From what I gather, every single locale in all 4 stories sold clothing and accessories for girls in their early twenties. I must say, however, Paula did buy me ice cream after. Score.

In closing, I give the gentlemen reading this the following situations which require interpretation of guy code, and ask you to email me your answer. I had an argument last night at an allegedly Irish pub called Shamrock which remains unsettled (which reminds me if you are ever in a situation where you can order a drink called Ferment, pass.).

First, if you walk into a bathroom to pee and there's five urinals (all unoccupied) which one do you use, #1 being the one closest to the door and #5 being the one against the back wall?

Situation number 2. You walk into a bathroom to pee and there's 2 urinals and 2 stalls. One of the urinals is occupied, where do you go?

'Tis all for now.

Zip it up and zip it out,

grego