¡Hola a todos!  The last week of summer is here in Buenos Aires, fall officially starts on Sunday.  It’s funny because the other day it was around 65 degrees and I was literally TREMBLING from being cold.  I was wearing pants and a jacket, too.  Then today it was SO DAMN HOT that wearing jeans would have been suicidal.  Buenos Aires, you’re being too fickle!

Now I need to explain the title of this post.  Argentine men are exceedingly beautiful, yet very aggressive.  They’ll come up and talk to you and then one of the following happens:

a) They try to make out with you
b) They ask if there’s any chance that you’ll sleep with them
c) They bite you

I AM NOT KIDDING, AN ARGENTINE BIT ME ON THE FACE.  The conversation went like this:

Aggressive Argentine:  Te quiero morder. (I want to bite you)
Persian Perversion: ¿En serio? (Seriously?)
Aggressive Argentine: *BITES FACE WITH ANIMALISTIC FERVOR*
Persian Perversion:  AHHHHH INSOPORTABLE AHHHHH

I was talking to Kate, our Student Life Director, and I told her this tragic tale and she taught me some new words to throw at these hypersexual beasts when they’re being too much to handle.  Desubicado comes from ubicarse, which means to locate.  So when you call someone a desubicado, you’re basically saying, “Boy, you better check yo’self before you wreck yo’self!”  Pesado means heavy, but in slang it means you’re being annoying.  I CANNOT wait to bust these out the next time I’m sexually harassed.  YA FEEL ME?  

My host mom has also been helping me out with the Argentine slang.  I LOVE HER SO MUCH.  I seriously have the best host mom that there’s ever been, she spoils me so much.  She always makes my favorite dinners, buys my favorite kind of fruit, and surprises me with medialunas!  Living in a homestay is incredible.  It’s what you always wished living at home with your parents was like: I have my own key and I come and go as I please, I have my favorite meals, AND every Wednesday our maid Margarita cleans my bathroom, changes my sheets, and organizes my room.  MY LIFE IS AMAZING. 

Here at NYU Buenos Aires, it’s T-3 weeks until break so Arielle, Kaarin, Phoebe and I have been busy researching and planning our trip.  We’re going to Puerto Madryn and Bariloche in the Patagonia region of Argentina; it’s going to be 10 days of non-stop adventuring!  In case you don’t know what Patagonia is, here is a Google image:

SPRING BREAK GOALS:
-see penguins
-hike glaciers
-ride llamas
-see whales that hopefully migrated early
-be cheap
-not die 

Patagonia ’10!
 
In other exciting news, I’M GOING TO THE SUPERCLÁSICO ON SUNDAY!  Since most people from the U.S. know absolutely nothing about fútbol, the superclásico is one of the fiercest rivalries in sporting history.  It’s when the two top Buenos Aires club teams—Boca Juniors and River Plate—play each other AND IT’S GONNA BE INSANE.  I mean…people have died at these games.  Yes, that kind of insane.  Like the Madrid vs. Barcelona clásico, but 400 times crazier because it’s South America.

On Monday my Mítos, Iconos, y Tradiciones Inventadas had to perform a telenovela and it was COMEDIC GOLD.  The plot was that Boca Juniors was having a party at a restaurant where the waiters were River Plate fans, so the waiters decided to drug the two main players with the help of the most notorious drug dealer in Buenos Aires (who we decided to name Mariano).  The players are drugged and accidentally sleep with each other’s twin girlfriends.  The next week, the twins are pregnant with the wrong player’s baby!  So naturally, their mother suggests that they switch identities so that no one will know about the mix-up.  Mariano LOVED it.  He even brought his flipcam and was cavorting around and recording it for us.  He showed a bunch of the faculty, too, because the next day one of the program directors told me that our telenovela was hilarious and that I played a great evil waitress. 

BUT THEN MARIANO GAVE US TWO DAYS TO READ A 200 PAGE NOVEL IN SPANISH ABOUT A FAT GIRL OBSESSED WITH RICKY MARTIN.  It was really sad though, because only two out of the seven people in my class read more than a chapter of the reading (I got to chapter six and was like kthnxbai).  Mariano was beyond disappointed.  He kept saying, ¿Por qué no leyeron?  ¿Por qué me hicieron enojado?  ¡Nunca estoy enojado con mis estudiantes!” (Why didn’t you guys read?  Why did you guys make me angryt?  I’m never angry with my students!) It was the most heart-breaking thing in the world.  But then he sent us this email:  “Les escribo hoy jueves a la mañana para que no me digan que no les advierto con tiempo sobre las lecturas.” (I’m writing to you guys Thursday morning so that you don’t tell me that I didn’t give you enough time with the readings.)  Buckle up, guys, Mariano is taking us on the GUILT TRIP OF THE CENTURY. 

In order to get a grip on my studying, I decided to head over to the Botanical Gardens in Palermo.  Not the greatest idea.  I was distracted the entire time because I kept taking pictures of all the plants and flowers and playing with all the cats.  SO MANY CATS.  It was a dream come true.  There was this kitty that kept following me around, and when I sat down to start reading, he just hopped into my lap!  Final verdict: UNPRODUCTIVE. 

This kitty was smelling my camera.  THE CUTE SCALE JUST SHATTERED:
 

MY NEW BEST FRIEND:

NATURE ALL UP IN HERE:
 

One thing I’ve neglected to mention is how our academic center is basically a replica of the Gryffindor common room.  It used to be the Angolan Embassy once upon a time, but they moved and NYU bought the building.  Anyway, it’s very beautiful and has many leather-bound books and smells of rich mahogany, very similar to legendary anchorman Ron Burgundy’s apartment.  So we have all these really comfortable couches and on Wednesday I was really tired so I decided to take a nap before Creative Writing.  For those of you who don’t know, I’m an absolute DELIGHT when I wake up.  This particular time, I was like “Ughhhhhhhpppppfffeerrrr, what time is it?” and looked up and what did I see? Nothing really, just Mariano chillin’ on the couch reading a newspaper.  LORD HAVE MERCY.  I thought I was dreaming so I rubbed my eyes and looked around, but no, I was very much awake.  That was the best thing that I’ve woken up to…in my life. 

Enough about my gay professor—time to talk about my humanitarian activities.  I feel like it really important to be involved in the community when you’re studying abroad.  Sure, it’s cool to travel every weekend and see a new country and whatnot, but are you really leaving your mark anywhere?  No.  You’re constantly a tourist.  Which is disgusting.  So in order to be good human beings, some of the NYU girls and I volunteered at a play center for disadvantaged students.  We had to organize all the toys, child-proof the area, and do some intense manual labor.  We were there for five hours or so and I was muerta de cansada!  Too much physical exertion for one day.  Despite all the hard work, it was lots of fun.  I can’t wait until April because we’re going back and then we can play with the little kids!  YAY! 

While I was washing dishes, Phoebe was doing this.   She’s so insoportable:

This was the most spastically written blog.  Probably because my host mom gave me some wine and I’m already drunk?  No sé, pero es possible.  ¡Olé!