I got a phone! And other news

Well, the day part of this day was incredibly productive, things went downhill after coming home, though.  This morning I bought a cell phone for $169AR which is U$S42-ish, which is the cheapest price I’ve heard amongst the IES students, so that’s good.  Other things I did today (not necessarily in chronological order) were: buy minutes for my phone, walk around the city, trying to get to know it a little better—which included walking successfully (twice) from the IES Center to La UCES—I’m not sure how great that went though, eat lunch with Annalise, make it in time for my scheduled Orientation activity, take passport-sized photos (I need like 5 and they come in sixes, so that was good), photocopy another page of my passport (I had done it before I left so I needed the page with my new entrance stamp, or whatever it’s called), acquire cell phone numbers from multiple people, study a map for a rather long time, feel like I haven’t learned anything since walking around and looking at the map for a rather long time, and eventually hopped on the bus and came back home (ok well I got the passport photos after I got back, but that’s a little beside the point).  Once I got here I took a nice cold shower which was wonderful.  Eventually Polly (the cook) came over and started making dinner and it was great. 

Remember how I said it’d be easier to make plans to hang out with each other once we all got phones? False.  I was a part of a Facebook chain of people planning to go out somewhere, and things got crazy.  People didn’t know how to get anywhere, except from the Center, and we all live all over the city, it was just crazy.  Now, this conversation started before dinner, and during dinner Yelena told me that there were plans with some other students to just go to a café or restaurant and have some wine and talk and have a good time.  That sounded (and still sounds) like a blast and so I changed my mind and decided to make plans with that group instead.  OF course, having already been a part of the conversation before, facebook still notified me when someone added to the message/chat…so I followed along.  It was seriously chaos with 8 people trying to figure out where how and when to meet at the same place.  Nobody knows where they are or where to get to anywhere or how to take the bus or the subway or what have you.  It was crazy.  So I was glad to be going with a group of 5 to some small little place to have a good time. 

Well as it turns out one of the kids that was going to go had a curfew placed on him by his host mom…not really sure what’s going on there, but I’ll ask him tomorrow if I see him.  Then there were two other girls and myself and Yelena.  So Yelena is the one with the numbers of these other girls and so she’s the one texting them; well they both live near the IES Center (and we do not…it’s a 20 minute bus ride away) but we figured we’d go anyway.  So we’re getting ready to go and after we’re dressed we call the taxi place they tell us to call to have a taxi pick us up.  At the end of the conversation the woman either said “Lo tengo” (I have it), or “no tengo” (I don’t have it) and then hung up, I heard “No tengo” but I figured that was ridiculous and so we figured she’d probably said “Lo tengo” so we finished putting on shoes and coats and stuff and headed downstairs to wait outside. And wait. And wait.  At this point it’s been 30 minutes since I called the place, so I called again and she said once more “No tengo”. 

So now we’re like “WTF, how does a city not have taxis available?” And after a few minutes of trying to find a Radio Taxi cab (the recommended taxi) to hail, we figured we should try to go to the bus stop to see if there was a bus that could take us to the center, or some more taxi traffic to try and hail a cab.  Well after 20 or so minutes standing at the bus stop, there’s nothing.  Having seen the bus from a different line pass by, we figured we’d go back by the house and walk to the end of that street (about 5 blocks) because Chris who lives at the end of the block says he takes that line and so we figured it would be around there.  Well by the time we get to the end of the 5 blocks, the girls have texted Yelena that they’re just walking around trying to find a place because everything around them is closed, and that if we still think it’s worth it we could go, but there was no guarantee. 

At this point we’re both getting tired and being let down time and time again, and so we just figured we’ll have plenty of time to go out with people another day—or heck we could even go out ourselves one time!  So we walk the 5 blocks back, head back upstairs, and no here I am, typing away at my computer instead of hanging out with friends somewhere…an unknown somewhere.  It’s not the phones that will lead us to hang out more easily…it’s getting to know the city.  Of course, once that happens there’ll be something else, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.  For now, we’re all left scrambling to make plans in the chaos.  Of course now there’s like a dance party right outside my room…I’m torn though, I can close the window and probably mute the noise a bit, but then run the risk of waking up all sweaty and gross…or I could keep the fresh air and the noise…unfortunately it’s all American songs and so they’re more distracting than just some random Argentine music.  I’ll probably close the window.

Here’s hoping I get some sleep tonight,

Kiki

P.S. I guess it wouldn’t be that bad if I didn’t because I have nothing to do tomorrow morning, so I get to sleep in—Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!