Ok, so first let´s not interpret the phrase ´halfway home´as an expression of being homesick. The fact is, I´ve been on the road for 2.5 weeks, I have a total of 5 weeks, so a little simple math says I am now at the halfway point. I was a little sad thinking about that today, but I would be REALLY ticked if I had a traditional 3 week holiday and was on my way home Saturday, instead of off to new adventures.
It is amazing how quickly people bond and become friends, even if only for a brief moment of time. I have 2 days left at the Institute, and will be leaving Friday with very warm memories of shared experience, hard work, and some relaxed moments of pure fun and goofiness. There are about 10 of us that have been around for the past two weeks that will be going our separate ways this weekend, and some of us were wondering this afternoon how the Institute will go on without us. Sucks to be them.
Seriously, this has been the hardest thing I´ve done in a long time, but so incredibly worthwhile. I´ll have very fond memories of my classmates, the staff, the teachers, Daniela´s smiling face first thing in the morning at the Institute, my host family and Malena´s incredible meals every night, and the community generally...the same people that I see in the morning and afternoon to and from school, my internet guy, the café con leche place, a great vegetarian restaurant when Phil and I were sick of meat, taking 2nd place in the treasure hunt with Jochen, Sylvia, and Danielle and the 10th floor patio beers afterwards, Rupert (salsa champion!) sitting across from me in class and making me laugh til I had tears some days, Manora (my tango partner...I hope her toes feel better soon!) and how annoying it must have been for her when the new guy sat in HER seat on Monday (but he was gone in about 15 minutes because we were too advanced, so it all worked out), the two kids that spent so much time trying to talk English to me, but all their English was from movie taglines, and on and on and on...
In any case, I did have a comical day yesterday.
I headed off to the bus terminal to buy a ticket to Salta on Saturday. The bus ticket folk are not well known for their patience and gracious manners, nor for their excellence in English. It was a shining moment, then, when I was able to complete the deal in Spanish, and end up with the right ticket to the right place on the right day. I was very proud.
On my way home, all I needed to do was buy a bloody pen. So, prepared with the right word from my trusty dictionary, I stopped at a ´kiosko´and with my perfect syntax and grammar asked the nice lady if she would be kind enough to sell me a pen. (Or at least I asked if she had one, but I meant the rest). Expression on lady´s face: "Huh?" So, with no back up plan in place, I reverted to charades (sp?) and brilliantly rendered the international sign of "I need to buy a bloody writing instrument of some sort". The same sign gets you the bill in the restaurant, even from the most testy waiter. The nice lady gets the idea, holds a pen in the air in front of my eagerly nodding head, takes my money, and gives me the pen. That SHOULD be the end of a fairly boring transaction, but nooooooo...trust Brian to push way past the idiot line. I´m just so damn curious!
"¿Qué es?" says Brian. The nice lady frowns a little. Hmmmm. "¿Cúal es?", I try, eagerly trying to find out what to call my new friend the pen. And then she gets this expression on her face, which I do actually recognize from similar experiences before. Here, silently, is what passes over her face:
"How is it even possible that this idiot in front of me can even manage to dress himself in the morning? He comes to my kiosk with words that make no sense, and then makes these ridiculous signs that seem to mean he would like a writing instrument of some sort. So I sell him a pen. And I´d like to have a nice cup of tea now. But he is still at my kiosk, pointing at the pen which he has just purchased, and asking me "WHAT IS THIS?" and "WHICH IS THIS?!" I wonder if there is a nice police officer nearby?"
So I panicked a little, knowing I was running out of time, and asked, "¿Se llama?" ("What does it call itself?", which after two weeks of intense Spanish is pretty embarrassing...) She then understood my problem, gave me the word, slowly, maybe even twice or thrice. I never used my new friend to write the word down, and promptly forgot the word, so I have no idea what to call the damn thing. I figure I´ll just name him Bob and be done with it.
