September 10

Hm, I don´t know what to write here. I´ve been really uninspired to write in my blog for the past couple days. I don´t know why. My classes are okay: I really enjoy my spanish class which is good because I have it 8 hours a week. My international relations class is kindof like any other international relations class (the information is really interesting but it´s often hard to pay attention because of all the big language and indepth theory talk) only worse because everything is in spanish and it´s really easy for my brain to just recognise is at background noise if I´m not directly involved in it. It´s sad because I really do want to know the information. I think I need to figure out a different way to study for the class. My dance classes are fabulous, as always. One is fairly easy for my level and one is very challenging and over my level... but I feel like I´m keeping up, or close to it. Tango club is getting really fun! I think I like it! And I also think that I will probably pursue my tango translation thesis idea.

Anyway, on friday I hung out with some of my roommates and ate dinner before Lauren came over to watch Love Actually... seriously I must have seen that movie 50 times by now... and though I can practically recite it from memory it still makes me cry a little. It was cool, we had a little girl party and ate chocolate covered peanuts and various cookie things from the store. It was fun. On Saturday we tried to go to a concert but it turns out that Argentines are 30 minutes late for everything except things that are free. Then they show up hours early. Sigh, oh well. We went to a museum for a while and then to a cafe for an American time dinner at around 6 pm. We talked for over two hours. I love that so much. I know that sitting in cafés talking for hours will be something I will always miss from being here. Then we went to Lauren´s house and she graciously let me use her internet to talk to Royce for a while. sigh. And we had some amazing ice cream. It was a little surprising because up until then all the ice cream I had had here was substandard I must say. I even bought some hagen daz (however you spell that) and it wasn´t good at all. Then I went out with Patricio and some of his argentine friends to celebrate one of their birthdays. Unfortunately since I had not had much sleep the night before I was ready to pass out at about 1 and talked them into letting me go home around 2 even though they thought I was completely lame. Oh well. Sunday Lauren and I went to one of her singing friends concerts at the museum of Bellas Artes (btw: lauren is a singer who is taking classes at the Arts Institute here... in one of her classes they watched a video of vocal cords that had been take by a camera that had been shoved up someones nose...). The concert was actually kindof amazing and it was in a museum so we got to look around at all the art... all in all it was a very spencer and emily kind of moment. Then we went looking for a restaurant that Coco (Lauren´s friend) wanted us to eat Choripan (a really fatty red sausage) at. Turns out she didn´t really no where it was so we ended up walking around a lot. We got there eventually though. And she and her friend were both really nice and fun. We went to her house after that to eat popcorn and watch the Devil Wears Prada. Then we tried to go home... but I got turned around looking for the bus and we ended up walking around for quite some time in a strange neighborhood after midnight. It was kindof a nice neighborhood though so we didn´t get robbed... unlike one of the other girls in my program who was just sitting in a park with a friend at 9 pm... or so I heard.

I´ve been thinking a lot lately about what I want to do next semester... since I don´t know if I´m getting the experience here that I really wanted. I have lots of options... but I have to keep thinking about things like money, credits, dance, and friends. It´s so complicated having so many things I want to do at the same time. I´ve just kindof been feeling like I´m only having a kindof spread out college experience, in spanish, and living in a house that is okay... but I don´t get very much attention. I´m thinking I would probably get more out to the culture if I weren´t having to spend a bunch of time reading about the international relations of south america... I don´t know. I just feel kindof focusless... but I guess that´s what happens when you want to dance, study, experience a culture, learn a new language, and save the world all at the same time. I know Spencer and I have had this conversation many times... but how do we find a satisfactory balance between art and making a difference. And then you throw in personal happiness and you´re practically counterproductive. But I did decide that I´m not going to decide anything until the end of October at least... even if I want to. So I should really stop thinking about it. But alas, my brain has a horrible habit of completely ignoring me.

I´m still having crazy dreams.