This past week, I intended to try out a bunch of new classes. (Notice how I say intended.) Although I did successfully go to two new Argentine classes this week, I intended to try two additional ones at UBA, the gigantic public university. However, both times I went to an UBA class, the other students and I (Argentine students included), ended up waiting outside the classroom for an hour before someone came and told us that the class does not begin until the following week, (whereas it says online that these classes were supposed to begin this week). Needless to say, I was pretty confused/frustrated/angry. At first, I thought that maybe I just missed the memo because I'm foreign, but that clearly wasn't the case since there were plenty of Argentine students there, too. I was confused about how a university can run on such complete and total lack of communication and angry that I had just wasted hours of my day (one of the buildings I went to took about an hour on public transportation for me to get to). Oh well, I just kept telling myself to go with the flow. That seems to be the name of the game around here.
Anyway, of the two classes I went to that did actually take place, one I liked and one not so much. The one I liked was a psychology class at Salvador (one of the private universities we can take classes at), called Psicología de la Interacción Social y los Pequeños Grupos (Psychology of Social Interaction and Small Groups). I was relieved to find out that another girl on my program, Emily, is in the class, too, so we were able to try and figure out what was going on together. The class had about 50 people in it and during the break Emily and I talked to some Argentine students who seemed friendly. The professor seemed nice and interesting and didn't have too difficult of an accent (a crucial factor in my decision-making). Nevertheless, I still had a hard time understanding what he was saying a lot of the time but I'm hoping my comprehension will improve over time.
On a more fun note, I had a great weekend! On Thursday night, I went to see the play Agosto (August Osage County), which I had seen in the states a few months ago. I absolutely loved the play when I saw it in the states, so I was really excited to see that it was playing here. I got a group of friends to go and we all had a really good time. Although it definitely helped having known the story already, I was surprised at how much of the Spanish I could understand, especially when they spoke on the slow side.
On Friday night, I went to El Teatro Ciego (Blind Theater), where you sit in total darkness and listen to a play happening around you. It was cool at first, but after realizing how much more difficult it was to understand Spanish without seeing faces, I zoned out for a lot of it. Afterward, we went to another famous parrilla called La Brigada. We got the special fixed menu for tourists where they just bring out a bunch of stuff for you to try, including mollejas (sweetbreads a.k.a. glands), another odd intestinal part, and two different cuts of meat. We were all very adventurous. In all the guidebooks, it says that at La Brigada the meat is so tender that you can cut it with a spoon, and this was in fact true. See below.
Although the meat was good at La Brigada, I think so far, in the competition for best parrilla, La Cabrera beat out La Brigada, (see earlier post for La Cabrera).
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