mood: i should SO be studying right now
music: raconteurs - steady as she goes


so i´m sick. real sick.
with something that is determined to take me down.

it started with a cold. no sweat. i spent a couple days doped up on dayquil/nyquil and mucinex. i was even starting to feel a little better.

but no. friday i was attacked by these awful awful stomach pains and several other gastro-intestinal maladies that you really don´t want me to go into detail about. i haven´t been outside in 2 days. i spend most of my time in transit between my bed and the bathroom. when i´m not running to vomit bile one can find me laying down, rubbing my belly and willing myself to feel better. this sucks. it makes me nostalgic for the days when mommy was around to take care of everything [including the rubbing of the tummy] while i concentrated on watching tv and eating jell-o all day. those were good days.

apparently this virus has been going around. in fact, my host sister just got over it a couple of days ago, so i know where i got it from. on the upside, she was able to tell me just what to do in order to get better faster. i´m hoping to be 100% in the next couple of days.


in other news...

week three is complete. god, i can´t believe i´ve already been here for 3 weeks.

classes are bueno. spanish is coming along nicely and my anthro class looks like it´s going to be totally clutch once we get going. i´m pretty much in love with my prof. he´s simply amazing - hilarious, chill, and always seems to be slightly intoxicated...but in the good way. and he´s best friends with the lead singer of babasonicos, which is an incredibly popular and long-standing indie/rock pop group based out of bs-as. he´s going to get some of us in the class vip passes to a concert or a private party or something later on in the semester. he does´t know this yet. but we´re confident that he´ll figure it out.

thursday night a bunch of us decided to hit the town [interjection/digression: at this point, i have to note that before i went out, i was talking with my host family about the similarities and differences between the partying schedules of americans and argentineans. i ended up explaining to them what ¨thirsty thursday¨ is and my host father fell in love with the concept because of the alliteration in the title...these people are so funny] . anyway, we heard about a club that played hip-hop music (called lost, or club2424 depending on who you consult), and in an effort to escape the omnipresent techno, trance, and house stuff the majority of the places play, decided to investigate. we hit up our usual shamrock for some pregaming. they have sweet deals for happy hour, and the atmosphere is pretty good for getting the night started. i tried to play it pretty cool (telling the guys who approached me that i spoke neither english or spanish) while diem and tara chatted up a few guys, and wasted britney insisted on blowing my cover time and time again. at one point, there were literally 7 guys standing around in a circle, trying to chat with us. she thought it was hilarious. i was slightly disgruntled and resented the 36 year-old who kept talking to brit and felt it was appropriate to perch on my leg while he did so. after a while, when i finally figured out why it was that i couldn´t feel my calf any more, joe came to our rescue and declared that it was time to get moving to the next location.

after turning down a couple of offers from drunk argentines to drive us to lost, we hopped in a cab. the scene was pretty interesting. seriously diverse crowd. after cashing in our round of free drinks we settled in on the balcony with some other folks from the program. on the main level there were some amazing break dancers. i mean like straight 80´s, hardcore, breakin 2: electric bugaloo type dancing. two guys and a girl, and the girl was phenomenal...seriously, she was the shit! eventually, the real music kicked in and everybody packed into the main dance floor. it was more or less just like going to the club back in the states, so it wasn´t anything life-altering. but it was nice to have just a little taste of something familiar. i think it´ll probably end up being our regular thursday spot.

on friday, i dragged my ass out of bed for my 9AM conversation class, which is basically a session where 3 of us sit around and talk to a teacher in spanish. all the second hand smoke i inhaled thursday night left me sounding like an 85 year old lifetime smoker. but hey, at least i was there. joe didn´t even make it at all. i ran into him later when we were completing step 876 of 2356542879 in the longest and most complicated student visa process ever created and he looked like death. so we decided to go get some lunch. he took me to a place that he´d supposedly been to before where one could get an amazing steak for 8 pesos. when we got there, it turned out that he had actually never been there before, but had seen it. and his info about the steak had been received from probably the most unreliable girl in the entire ies program (it actually cost 20 pesos). to top it all off, right before we got our food, a tiny little cockroach crawled across our table. now if you know me at all, you know how well i get along with insects, so i´m sure you can conjure up an image of how i handled that. i love joe dearly, more dearly than any of the other guys in the program. but i am never ever letting him take me anywhere. ever. again.

friday night my lovely ladies krystle, shanell, and i went to the alejandro sanz concert (he did the song ¨la tortura¨ with shakira a couple of years ago). not gonna lie, it was pretty stellar. shanell has been a die-hard fan for over a decade so she was pretty much in heaven. krystle enjoys random adventures, so she was pacified. and as for me, i didn´t really understand the majority of what he was singing, but the music was pretty. and since shanell took it upon herself to teach me the words to his most recent hit ¨te lo agradezco, pero no¨ (also with shakira) i was singing my little heart out during that one song. all in all, i´d say it was a success.


yesterday and today i have been quarantined. i really really should have spent more time studying, but it´s hard to keep one´s face in a book when one´s face is in the toilet...ah well...


besos,
t