I am going to try and get back into posting here with some regularity now that life is getting somewhat back to normal and now that I have far more free time (time that was previously spent watching TV shows on my laptop like Dexter, watching rerun clips of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, or just link surfing on wikipedia learning about all kind of new things. Roberto´s computer doesn´t allow me to do that because it is far too slow to watch any type of video and his chair is too uncomfortable to have the desire to sit here for hours link surfing.)
I had my second Tango class last night. I am always super nervous to go to it and every bit of me tells me to just skip it and stay home. But, once I get there I always end up enjoying it quite a bit. The fact of the matter, that I am just going to have to accept, is that I am very very tall and most girls here are very very short. My strides will always be about twice as long as theirs and therefore gracefullness will continually allude me.
Yesterday I went to the immigration headquarters to try and figure out my visa process. I went with my required passport, photocopies of every page of passport, 4 passport photos, and 300 pesos cash. I had to skip a class to keep my appointment (that Flacso made for me). I head down to the port where the immigration building is, find a newsstand that sells books, buy Dan Brown´s new thriller, The Lost Symbol (or that is the Spanish name at least, El SÃmbolo Perdido, I don´t know what it is in English) to read while I wait around, and headed in. The Flacso staff was there to greet us and show up what had to be done. I went into the building, got in line, got my fingerprints taken, my photos scanned. I then got hustled into another room with Juan, one of the coordinators, where I sat down with an employee at a computer, who typed my name into a computer and promptly told me that, because I went to Uruguay 2 weeks ago, during Semana Santa, the company that we traveled with, Buquebus, still hadn´t entered into their computer system that I was back in the country. So, according to Argentine immigration I am not in Argentina legally and in fact am still in Uruguay. I told the guy to look at my passport, that I have a stamp saying that I legally re-entered Argentina on the 5th of April. He knew that I had but said that I have to wait 10 days and return to see if they had updated the computers. Flacso is taking care of it, but, what a pain. Now I will have to miss more classes. If the process had worked properly, I would have had to wait about 5 hours in the immigration building while they filed the paperwork and printed out a temporary citizen card to be used until the real citizen card is issued in a few weeks. So, I will be going back twice. Hello Argentine Bureaucracy, I have heard that you are EXTREMELY inefficient. But I suppose that is the nature of bureacracy in general. Doing the same process in the US would be far far worst, I imagine.
My host dad, Roberto, and I are going tomorrow morning to puruse a few local pawn shops where "used, aka, stolen goods" are sold back to the public. Wouldn´t it be wild to come across some of our stolen stuff. I would immediately front the money to get my laptop back if I found it.
I just hope they wouldn´t charge too much.
I went looking for new digital cameras yesterday while walking around the city with a couple of friends just to look at the prices. Because of the 21 percent sales tax, I am guessing, there is no such thing as a cheap digital camera. A basic, no frills, digital starts at around 200 dollars and goes up from there. If I am not mistaken, you can buy a cheap, no frills digital in the US for about 60 dollars...yep, just checked amazon, 54 dollars actually. It would be ridiculous to spend that much. So, I guess I shall go without a camera. Unless, of course, I find a nice used one that was stolen from some other unaware gringo and sold to a pawn shop. They might be quite cheap.
This weekend is my friend Adam´s birthday and we are going to go out to a nice dinner at a restaurant in Palermo called Las Cabras, then to a bar to pound down a few, and then to a concert called La Bomba del Tiempo, a high energy latin drum group that plays weekly and still manages to pack about 1000 people into this cultural center to dance. Should be a great time.
On another good note, a new supergroup in the US has formed and has called themself the Overtone Quartet, or something like that. Chris Potter on tenor sax, Dave Holland on bass, Jason Moran on Piano, and Eric Harland on drums. I have seen all of these guys separately and they are all amazing. I can´t even imagine how awesome they are going to be together. I am psyched. Late may they take the stage with Kurt Rosenwinkle Trio, another amazing and famous guitarist. Furthermore, they are playing in the newly renovated Teatro Colon, a famous and gorgeous theater in the heart of Buenos Aires. I am buying my tickets this weekend. I cannot wait!
Well, I am off to do some studying for my UBA class. I have a partial exam, that is, midterm, this coming saturday and if I dont do well on it they kick me out of the class. So, I have to be pretty well prepared for this one. Luckily, I got a tutor to help me out in the class and she is doing all of the reading we have to do for the exam and on Monday will tell us what we really need to focus on. It should be a huge help.
On a side note, if anybody ever gets a chance to try sweetened tomato jelly on toast, do it, it is delicious.
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