Charades

We’re back. More or less. UBA is still taken over by the students, but they’ve relaxed their stranglehold on my facultad. We could get into the building, and believe it or not the classrooms on the ground floor were available. Lecture was had for the first time in a month, and actually in a classroom. Don’t pop the champagne yet, though. Students leading the toma came into our class and instigated a heated 20-minute discussion on what we thought of the strike, because it is far from over. Tomorrow night is another student assembly, i.e. party congress, which will issue a new 5-day plan to lead La Facultad de Ciencias Sociales to a bright and glorious future. Viva la Revolución!

In the midst of this prolonged crisis was yet another holiday, El Día del Estudiante. This came after butcher’s day, secretary’s day, street cleaner’s day and guard-standing-at-the-front-door-of-city-hall’s day. There could be a holiday for all of these professions, as there seems to be some sort of ferria every other week. Student’s Day, however, doubles up as a holiday celebrating the arrival of Spring which I think is fantastic. We stare at groundhogs and watch it spin around in a circle, wonder why it woke up when it didn’t need to, and go back to bed. Argentines throw a huge party. Any excuse. I made my way up to the Central Park of Buenos Aires where every student in Buenos Aires seemed to have migrated. I’m sure the students leading the tomas were there – striking is a tiring business and holidays are incredibly necessary. I headed to a free outdoor concert, where I heard one good Santana-like band and one trashy pop band that had it been singing in English I would have run away and puked in a trash can. Singing in Spanish, however, eased the pain and allowed me to simply watch the spectacle of outrageous outfits running around on stage singing things which I couldn’t completely understand. Here is the lost in translation play of the day- I was told ‘Happy Spring’ at one point and I simply agreed, thinking that yes it’s a happy spring indeed. The same person then turned to Laura, who was standing right next to me, and said the same thing. Laura replied with a huge gracias. So this is like a birthday? Thank you for wishing me a happy spring? It’s only my spring? No wonder the person was looking at me funny. That Sudafed is mine, don’t you touch it.

Speaking of parties, it was Tina’s husband’s (Niko) birthday on Friday, so of course we had another asado. Sorry to all of you out there who have to pay $40 for a Brazilian BBQ – I had one ten times better in our kitchen. It was a family affair, which was fine by me because that meant more beef for everyone. Dinner conversation was as animated as always, with at one point Ramiro revealing that he wanted to buy a motorcycle. His girlfriend then jokingly shot back that if he bought one, she was gone. I think though she might have been serious to some degree. Stories about everything under the sun were told. Niko got out of his chair several times to physically act out a conversation he had with whoever about whatever. With all of the Spanish yelling going on at mach 10, watching Niko give Tom Hanks a run for his money helped me keep up a little better. Sign 'im up - he was pretty good!