One of the stories that I wanted to be sure and share regards a rather silly and uncomfortable incident that took place on the metro. I don’t remember where we were going, but for some reason KellyAnne and I happened to be on the metro in the height of rush hour. It was crowded to a degree that I have never experienced in my life; people were pushing and pushing to get in, shoving everyone tighter and tighter together to a ridiculous and probably unsafe degree. I was standing facing a business man as people continued to shove all of us tighter and tighter together, and the degree of closeness that we were reaching was uncomfortably intimate. Luckily he was also uncomfortable, not a creeper in the slightest, so I guess it could have been worse. However, as more and more people crowded into the train our bodies were being shoved tighter and tighter together, and it was impossible to ignore the fact that we were as close as we were. Because we were facing one another, it was rather awkward, and as people continued to push into me from behind (my back was to the door) I had to move forward more and more into a space that simply didn’t exist. In order to try and decrease the discomfort level in respect to the man and I being so personal, as I moved my body forward I leaned my head back, otherwise I would have had to have my face resting on his chest. This resulted in my stomach being pressed tightly against his while my back was arched and my face was throw back almost to the ceiling. (I hope) as a result of my odd posture, the man decided that I must be pregnant, and he told all of the people around us that I was pregnant and needed to sit down. Probably he was also trying to escape our terribly awkward situation. So there I was, on a packed subway train where it was impossible to move, being told that I looked pregnant. Awesome. Here’s a recent picture of me, taken the weekend before in Mendoza:
Now tell me, do I really look like I'm "with child"? I sure hope to God not! Don’t tell me that Argentinean’s don’t have body image problems if that’s what pregnancy should look like!! Luckily I just laughed it off, and I thought it was too funny of a story to not share, even though it’s pretty embarrassing!
I don’t remember the exact chronological order of the various things we did the rest of the time there, but I know it included at some point the following things:
MALBA: A big, new art museum full of famous and important Latin and South American works. Although I’m not very familiar with the world of art (I can look at it and enjoy it, obviously, but I’m pretty lost when it comes to the whole culture of appreciating it through interpretation and blah blah blah) KellyAnne is pretty into it. In fact, last semester she took a South American Art Appreciation class, and this particular museum was incredibly exciting to her because we saw tons of works that they actually studied in her class. It was a very nice museum, and it was fun to be with her because she was so animated about everything we were seeing, and was able to explain some of the interesting details about many of the works and artists to me.
Tango Show: On evening we went to a tango show at a restaurant downtown. It was incredible! I had no idea it was going to be as involved as it actually was; there were three pairs of dancers, a live band, a live singer for all of the songs they danced to, and sort of a vaudeville-style running interaction between the dancers, the singer (who was also like the MC), the band and the audience through the whole show. It was very fun and impressive to watch, and lasted about 2 hours.
Discothèque: We went out one night to a giant techno club of several levels with Rosie and several of her friends from her immersion program. I’m not sure exactly why, but it turned out that there were about 2 million guys and 5 girls, of which we were 3. Not only that, but Argentine guys are kind of creepers; they’re very forward and presumptuous, and assume that you will be going home with them tonight, thank you very much. Since they happened to be quite wrong in the presupposition, we devised some very entertaining methods of deterrence. The three of us girls invented a super fun dancing game, where we stood together in a little circle and made rules about how we had to dance. For example, one of use would say “dance like a dinosaur would dance!” and then all three of us would have to imitate dinosaurs dancing until someone said “now you’re a penguin!” Among having animal dances, there were rules like “any kind of dance you want as long as your hands are above your head for the next five minutes!” “Only move your left knee!” “Drive a car and sing along with the radio!” “Put your elbows in the middle of the circle!” … and it went on, and on, and on. Because we were acting so strangely everyone pretty well left us alone, and we danced that way for probably 2 ½ hours. We were getting so creative at the end that we ended up exercising parts of our body that we probably forgot existed, and I woke up sore the next morning! It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had at a dance club, to be honest.
Food fair!!
I don’t know how we ended up finding out about it, but at the Buenos Aires convention center there just happened to be a huge food festival going on. You paid 3 dollars to get in, and then enjoyed all kinds of food tastings of the finest Argentine foods – olive oils, wines, meats, cheeses, chocolates, jams, jellies, preserves, olives…..the list goes on an on. We spent several hours there, and I ate twice as much as I should have because my baby was hungry, too.
And….yeah. We did several other random things, like wandering through the St. Elmo neighborhood where we were staying and checking out all of the antiques and boutiques, etc, as well as eating at some pretty nice restaurants. We went to a really nice Sushi place across the street from a live concert in a park, and the people tried really hard to rip us off because we were speaking English. We had to send the bill back three times for them to correct it before they were honest with us. It was pretty silly and frustrating—that’s the first time I’ve had that kind of problem, even though I know lots of other people that have dealt with being treated that way. Thank God we speak English and aren’t idiots, otherwise we would have paid way more than we should have for our meal! We went to bed late the night before our flight back home, because it was the birthday of one of the girls in our hostel, and it was fun to celebrate together. And then…we returned to Santiago….y punto. :)
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