Friday, July 03, 2009

swine flu.

I am currently sitting in the #3 Swine Flu country in the world. The mayor of Buenos Aires declared a national emergency state on Tuesday and ever since then what used to be called "peste porcina" (swine flu) when it was all the way up there in dirty Mexico is now called "gripe influenza A" (much more civilized) is all that is on the news stations.

All of a sudden life went from being shut up doing homework to being pretty eventful. I finished correcting my paper on Tuesday morning before going to turn it in - I ended up printing it off 5 minutes before class in an internet café near the facultad with about 5 other classmates. It was kind of a sweet moment. I felt like I was on cloud nine with that hot little 12 pager right off the printer.

Then I got to class and my professor asked for our papers. This professor is not the kindest or most nurturing of individuals, let's just say that. I handed him mine and he immediately bitches at me for not putting it in some kind of plastic sleeve or report cover. Fine, did not know that was the cultural norm. Whatever. I don't care. Everybody gives him their papers. He starts flipping through them, commenting on citation errors and misuses of the guidelines and font size, obviously in front of everybody. He gets to mine and says that my introduction is too long and that he doesn't understand my thesis statement. Why don't you at least read it and then rake it over the coals, I think. He then informed us that if he spills something on them and they don't have plastic covers, it's not his fault. His last statement about the papers is to say that anybody who put it in double-spaced, size 12 did not write enough and that the single-spaced ones were much more substantial. Flash back to assignment sheet, which specifically asks for size 12, double-spaced. So, cloud 9 went down to like cloud 1.5 and I'm sitting there angry just thinking about how ready I am to not have to deal with this stupid facultad anymore.

Turning in this paper meant the recovering of life for at least a couple of days. I met Avery and ate half of a gigantic pizza and then the biggest piece of chocolate mousse cake I have ever seen. We parted ways and I spotted the linen converse that all the porteñas have that make them look so cool and that I've been looking for for weeks. I finally get them. I go and wait inside my hair salon to get another trim and become human and non-wookie again, and then on my walk home I happen to pass right by my favorite store in all of Buenos Aires, Prune. Prune is the most fashionable, beautiful "casa de cuero" leather purse store that exists.

I've been in Prune many times since I arrived, but never found something that was quite right. Finally, I saw it. Soft, supple, large, black leather bag with fringe. Big enough for laptop, but definitely not just utilitarian. I've looked at a billion leather bags since arrival and found nothing quite what I wanted, but this was love at first sight.

So, now I am becoming quite the porteña. Linen converse high tops, long grey jacket, Prune bag, $19 all-in-one mp3 player (because my ipod shuffle got lost/stolen...). Found the perfect lamp for my room and a can opener that I know how to work. I'm really settling in here.

Also found out today that I will not be having my oral final exam at UBA...because of swine flu. While nobody has contacted me regarding exactly how I will get any credit for the massive amounts of work I have put into Sociología y Antropología de Arte, I am just going to be happy about this for right now and begin to deal with school again tomorrow.

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