On Thursday night I went to another play through registration with IFSA. It's really nice that I don't have to pay for all of these plays and things, but I know that a lot of the activity fees were paid for in our original tuition. I'm glad to be taking advantage of these opportunities :) I went to a show called "Choque Urbano, Baila!" It was fantastic and kept me entertained for every minute the actors were on stage. They were a group of people in brightly colored overalls and face paint, and they used numerous methods to make music. They banged on trash cans and lids, used whips that made really cool sounds when they sliced them through the air in unison, jump roped in a synchronized fashion, played violins, etc. They leapt around on monkey bars and swings, threw leaves up into the sparkling lights, and did the splits while moving across the rolling trash cans. It was quite a spectacle. There was constant action and fantastic collaboration. They did flips off each other and jumped over each other, among other insane dance moves. There wasn't a lot of talking but it was better that way; dialogue was not the emphasis of this work of art. At the end, they encouraged audience participation, which was super fun. They separated the crowd into sections and we each made a different sound that paired up with a hand motion by the actor, and it sounded pretty rad when put together.
I joined the gym near me for 130 pesos, so about 32.50 US dollars for a one month membership. I think is a pretty good deal if I go enough to make it worth the money :) I went on Friday and after only running on the treadmill for 20 minutes, riding the exercise bike for 10, and then an ab workout, I was completely beat. It was very difficult to get through and my initial reaction was disappointment for being so out of shape, but I perked up when I realized that I have to start somewhere. Pain is motivation to keep going! Except if you're talking to my mom. She thinks it's motivation to stop going to the gym :) Love you, Mumsy. I really don't prefer treadmills and if it were easier to get out and run I would, but for now I'm stuck with this. For me it's just harder to judge how fast I'm going than when I am running outside, and since running is largely psychological, I get tired a lot quicker and it is harder to run shorter distances. I start sweating within five minutes and feel like such an amateur around all the other beastly gym goers cranking up the resistance to my left and right. It's also just really repetitive and in order to get through a run, I have to sing songs in my head so I forget where I am. A big reason why I like running is because I like looking at the trees and the rest of the natural world, and that doesn't happen when you're in a small room filled with rubber and metal. I wrote a haiku to describe my feelings about treadmills:
no trees or my sky
running running 'til I die
human hamster wheel
Yesterday Ana Lucía invited me to come see a short performance that she and her acting troupe put together on a random street in the barrio Almagro. Before her group performed, there was a band with a mandolinist (is that a word?), a guitarist and singers. Their fun folky style reminded me of bands that I used to see in Western Springs back in the States. After that there was a group of clowns that did tricks and acted oddly. It was super weird, but clowns are weird in every country. Ana's performance was a 5 minute rendition of Romeo y Julieta (Romeo and Juliet), and it was hysterical. I was crying with laughter by the end of it. There were 6 people playing all of the characters, and it was very overblown and dramatic, which helped since they didn't have the old English to create humor for them. In the end, Romeo and Juliet took turns waking up and seeing the other one dead and then killing themselves again.. about 8 times. It was so funny and fast-paced. Ana played Juliet and she was beautiful. I feel like we have gotten 10 times closer since mamá left, because it's just us now and she's around a lot more. I'm so happy that she finally feels like a sister to me. Today we talked about Argentine movies and she recommended a bunch to me; I'm excited to watch them :) I also really love her boyfriend; he seems like such a great guy. I can tell that they are unbelievably happy together; whenever they see each other, their faces light up and they look like there is no one else in the world at which they would rather be looking.
Last night I went a birthday dinner for my friend Kayti with my family friend Sara and then two more girls who I had met a while ago but hadn't hung out with much. It was a blast. We talked from 8.30 at night til 4 in the morning while enjoying Mexican quesadillas and tacos, wine, and a kilo of ice cream (between the five of us we finished the whole thing!). It was so much fun to have a girls night; it reminded me of sleepovers I used to have in grade school and high school. We waited an hour for the colectivo (bus) and if I wasn't with two friends I would not have felt as safe standing near the curb for that long. Nothing sketchy happened; just a few too many honks from cars and then two boys asking us if we wanted to play Bingo. I don't even want to know what that is code for. The colectivo finally came when we started calling a cab; I wonder if it would have come earlier if we had threatened it with alternate forms of transportation an hour ago. The bus system can be kind of sporadic but it is much kinder on our wallets to pay 1.25 pesos rather than 50, so it's worth the wait.
This morning I had an unnecessarily scary experience. The door from my kitchen to the hallway where my room is can be ridiculously loud when it is closed. I was sleeping and I don't remember what I was dreaming about, but I was jerked awake by what seemed like the loudest sound I had every heard in my life, a sound too loud to be made my door, and in my half-conscious state I was convinced it was a gunshot. My whole body shook and I started crying silently to myself, hiding under my pillow and blankets. I was trying to think of where to go, where to hide in this tiny room. I was crying for my host sister, for her boyfriend, for the cat and the dog and whoever else was dead in this temporary realm of insanity in which I was trapped. I feared for my life. I knew at that moment that I was not ready to die. I still had so much to do, so much more to experience. It made me upset that someone was trying to take this special existence away from me. After a few minutes of shaking and hiding under my pillow, I came to my senses. I realized that I could hear the murmuring of Ana and Suky, and even some scratching that could have been Tango clawing at the ground. Therefore my logic led me to the path of reason; it must have been the door shutting and it sounded louder because my senses were more acute and vulnerable in my sleep; maybe I was even having a scary dream at the time. I cannot explain how amplified and unbelievably loud that sound was, or how real my fear of death was in that moment. I went into the kitchen after a few minutes, confirmed with my host sister that it was the door slamming and then I think I told her "Estoy muy alegre de que no haya sido una pistola" (I am really glad that wasn't a gun). She and Suky gave me weird looks that I didn't understand at the time, and then I wandered to my room still slightly delusional and went back to sleep until 3 pm. Well, glad that's over and that I'm alive. Sometimes I question my sanity.
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