I just got back from watching RENT in Spanish and am incredibly excited - it was probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life. If I wasn't before, I am absolutely, sincerely, one-hundred-percent in love with the Spanish language now and forevermore. Just saying - English is overrated and so much harsher sounding, what with the diphthongized vowels and generally unpleasant "r" sound. The theater itself was neat too ... I don't know how to describe it, but the "lobby" was almost outdoors (maybe not almost, maybe it actually was? there was concrete involved, though), but ... I don't know. I give up. Here is a picture of the sign outside:
Edit: Also, they were playing music from La Bohème during the interval and before the show began. I don't know if that's something most productions do, but it was a nice touch.
Anyway, aside from this amazing experience, how have my days been going, you might wonder? (Or you might not.) Regardless, I will inform you now.
Wednesday I woke up in the morning - as I tend to do, seeing as how there's, you know, school - and walked across the street to a store, where I intended to buy chewing gum in order to receive change in order to take the bus. Sadly, they had none. I therefore went to the nearby subway station to take that instead, and in the process managed to garner not one but TWO one-peso coins! How, you ask? First, I paid for my ninety-cent ticket with a two-peso note, and received one in return. SECOND, I bought two granola bars from a kiosk that totaled to $3.50 - and I paid with a five. Sweet! I always feel so conniving/skilled when I manage to garner change.
Now, about these "granola" bars. They were marked with the brand name Quaker, and bore intriguing flavors: apple and lemon pie, respectively. And they were delicious. But one noticeably absent factor seemed to be granola, in that I'm pretty sure they contained none - the taste/consistency resembled puffed rice more than anything. Anyway, here is a photo of the wrappers of the suspiciously granola-lacking but nevertheless delicious-tasting Quaker bars:
Wednesday night we had a salsa class. I somehow managed to get through the individual step-learning part by (probably bothersomely) repeatedly asking help from other people who could do it. After this, they had people pair up. I exited at this point, as I was not about to ask anyone to dance - because I'm pretty sure that would have come with the implication that I knew what I was doing, which I no longer did. And clearly nobody had any intentions of asking me - the guy to girl ratio was significantly lower than one, and I would hardly be a choice pickin'.
Diego was there. He danced with J. and S. And was awesome as usual. At the beginning when I was awkwardly standing in a corner he came over and talked to me and was like, "Yeah, I used to be pretty shy with this sort of thing too, but I got accustomed to it ... you just have to embrace the ridiculousness of it all." Sadly, I feel like whatever shared inhibitions we may have initially had were no longer quite so shared by the end of the evening, after a few beers and rounds of shots on his part. Ah well, c'est la vie. (La vie bohème!)
Today school again, and then I came home, interneted, went to the bank to get money from the ATM (because they only have ATMs inside banks, not on the street - but, I mean, there are banks everywhere), went next door to give the laundromat my laundry to do, because apparently that's how they roll (I can go get it in 24 hours), and came back to tell Sra. Estela that I wouldn't be eating at home because I was going to see RENT. It was not yet six. We eat at 9:30 or so. I thought for sure four hours would be plenty of notice, but apparently she had already started cooking, and was like, grumble grumble, you should tell me these things ahead of time. Oops. Way to get even further away from her good side.
After that, I walked a few blocks to a café, where I sat for a couple of hours, drinking a coffee and an orange juice and finishing reading the story we had for lit class tomorrow - all in all, it was a surprisingly productive evening followed by a surprisingly impressive performance of RENT (which I'm never quite sure if I should entirely capitalize or not). But yeah, one thing that I've realized here that I didn't really think would be a part of the experience at all is how much I love/miss reading/literature. It's been so long since I just sat down with a book for a few hours. I should get back to that. Shalimar the Clown is still in progress. Perhaps I will find time to finish it this weekend.
Aside from that, not much. Classes tomorrow and then later that evening we're leaving for Iguazú falls - it's an overnight bus ride. It'll be fun, I presume. Anyway, I should go to bed now - the musical left me far too energetic for after midnight; I figured typing this up was the best use of said energy (although I guess other people were going out dancing afterwards - crazy!)
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