Abril en Buenos Aires

I missed a week of writing for this blog, but I'm picking up jobs left and right! I was worried when my first school hired me, because I was teaching just one lesson a week. Then another school took me on, and I was teaching 5 lessons a week. It was a little better for my self esteem, but still not enough. With that amount of hours, I would have to be home in 2 months instead of my minimum of 3.

My friends kept telling me "something will come up," and I felt like yelling "when?" I needed double the course load in order to make my rent, and I just did not see that happening any time soon. Luckily! It happened sometime soon. I am teaching constantly, and all 3 schools that have hired me are constantly calling to offer me more hours. I'm running from class to class, from one part of the city to the next, from my classroom to the Subte station... but I'm earning an income. Finally!!!

It's strange, teaching business English. I feel like I am one of the least savvy people out there, and yet here I am teaching impeccably dressed men and women how to conjugate verbs while describing net interests and sales interest. They want to learn so badly, and they are often more nervous than I am! One businessman almost broke his pen, he was gripping it so hard during a writing exercise. It's hard to teach some people, because the books are too difficult for them, but they know enough to get by. One woman studied English for ten years, but hadn't studied it for another ten or so. I thought her English wasn't so bad, that she could understand quite a bit, but she stopped me in the middle of a sentence and asked me what "nice" meant. It forces you to scour your personal thesaurus for synonyms on a regular basis.

I'm meeting with some girls later this week to do an informal language exchange. "My English for your Spanish" type of thing. I need to improve my Spanish. I know that I am slowly improving... watching TV helps with that, as does meeting bi-lingual people. Beer helps, too. I am more willing to risk wrong answers and laugh at my mistakes when I'm slightly less sober...

And my mistakes are constant, not just with the language, but with everything. I now have more of a handle on the colectivos, or buses, but my first bus ride alone was an experience. I finished teaching a class downtown, or Microcentro, and decided to take a colectivo home to my house in Belgrano. I whipped out my Guia T, the map of the city, and discovered which bus ran in the my grid. I wandered around the couple of streets covered in the grid, only to give up fifteen minutes later and ask a police officer "donde esta el colectivo estacion?" ... he pointed me in the right direction, I found the stop, and proceeded to wait for the bus... for 45 minutes. I am a stubborn woman, and had nothing else to do today. I made it my mission. I will take this bus home. I will. (It might be wise to keep in mind that I'm hypoglycemic, and hadn't eaten all day. I finished teaching at 2, caught the bus close to 3...) So I got on the bus, a little disheveled and VERY hungry, and asked the driver "Juramento?", indicating my street. He ignored me, almost pointedly. I repeated again,slightly louder, "JURAMENTO?" and he glanced up at me and muttered "Si, si.." I sat down, pretty proud of myself. And the bus drove off in the opposite direction of Belgrano, headed to the more run down neighborhood of La Boca. I told myself that it would turn around again, that everything was fine. And was promptly kicked off the bus in the very non-tourist friendly area of La Boca. This is the area of town that locals had told me "Just don't speak any English, it singles you out... it's the area of town that other tourists had told me they had been mugged. I had a mini panic attack, fought back tears, and saw another woman get off of the bus. I jogged after her up the street, and when she realized I was following her, I attempted in garbled Spanish to ask where the other bus stop was. She smiled, said "I speak English," and led me to the correct bus stop, all the while chiding me, saying "This is not the area of town to get lost in." I rode another colectivo all the way back to Belgrano, arriving around 7 o'clock, still with a very empty stomach. I bought an empanada, filled with carne, and munched it while walking home. Once home, I downed two glasses of wine and went to bed early. The best thing about this experience... I am certain to ask both the driver of the colectivo AND passengers now where the bus is going. Also, I wasn't mugged. That's a positive, too...

I went on a date with a man, going to the international film festival and dinner at a parilla afterwards. I thought that he was shy, until he insisted on taking a cab home with me. Because "Belgrano is very dangerous." I laughed at him. Belgrano is well lit and residential. I am always cautious, but I have walked the streets of Belgrano pretty late at night and have been fine. "If you want to ride with me, that's fine, I don't mind the company, but I don't need an escort," I told him. He tried to walk with me all the way to my house, but I didn't necessarily want a strange Argentinian man knowing where I live. I stopped him at the corner. "This is far enough," I told him. After an awkward goodbye, I left him standing at the corner and continued up the street. The Argentinian girls that I've told this story to roll their eyes. "He was looking for more," they tell me. "You were right to send him away."

The other Argentinian men that I've met come on so strong, they make drunken frat boys look tame. "I love you, Laura," one man told me in a bar, after I had already made it clear that he was making me uncomfortable. Another man called me "Marilyn Monroe," I guess due to my short hair? Yet another man stopped me as I got off of the Subte train, saying, "I have just broken the world record for falling in love. I must see you again." I smiled, said "Chau!" and continued on my way. I asked Sandra, a girl who I met for an impromptu Spanish/English exchange, "Does this work on women here?" The answer, which greatly reassured me, was a definite "No."

Muriel has been laughing at me, because I keep buying groceries that she already has in our fridge. We've talked it over, and for the next trip we're going to split the groceries. She keeps feeling bad for her poor American roommate who can't cook, and has made me a couple of meals saying, "You need to eat better!" Other times, I eat my humble peanut butter and jelly sandwich (Peanut butter is rare to nonexistant here, but I found some in Barrio Chino, the Chinese district, which is a couple of blocks from my house) and watch her create a delicious shrimp and rice dish, with my mouth watering. I have cooked a couple of things, nothing extravagant, really. I'm getting to be a pro at lighting the monster gas oven and the burners, though! I did try to make a cream sauce, which didn't really work out in my favor. I ate it anyways.

I'm waiting for my bike lock in the mail. My parents were nice enough to ship it to me, and I am so excited. I don't feel quite ready to ride in the streets (I really can't emphasize enough how absolutely insane Buenos Aires drivers are), but it will be nice to be able to ride the twenty blocks to the Subte, instead of having to walk them.