mi primer dia de escuela
man... i tell you what
i had some high hopes for today...the weekend stretched out far too long after the madness of saturday night. and it was indeed madness, the party was elsewhere thank goodness...and i got a chance to talk to this girl i kinda dug..we had this long ass spanglish convo about all kinda shit for like an hour..then a bunch of the kids started dancing, the pisco was flowing and we decided that we oughtta go hit a club.. well i was saying my goodbyes when i realized the gringo dance crew had already salieron...so i rushed out of the place and hit the elevator...in the lobby i blurted out to the doorman "did you see a big group of gringos come through",he pointed to where they were waiting for a cab or two across the street. so i joined the crew and we headed to BellaVista, the party side of town, aparently..by the time we got to the place it was already after two..not really a problem here, we were out dancing until like 4am. so thats when i realized why everybody thinks americans are easy. its all on acount of how we dance. i swear to god. now dont get me wrong there is some fucking sexy latin dancing, i aint tryin to deny it...and hell of it, latin dancing that is. but the fact is that suckas at the clubs only bust out a little bit of that, i mean it informs all the movement and all the clubs are like all reggeton all the time as far as i can tell...with the occasional new wave 80s tunes, a few of the most popular songs, and some old madonna, prince, or the michael jackson circa billy jean thrown in for good measure, but mostly its reggeton...to which one basically adapts a cha cha cha sort of step plus a cumbia bit with the hips...its sort of latin americas answer to the white boy shuffle as far as i can tell..the point is that its pretty restrained for a crowded dance floor 3pisco sours into 3am friday night, feel me? course what the hell do i know? my ass aint been out dancing but once since i got here but i tell you what, us gringos cut a little corner of the dance floor out for ourselves and garnered some notice with our freaky maneuvers. this one girl in my program, she kinda quiet but funny, on the dance floor, she crazy..takes up enough space for like three people, randomly busts out the running man or other such random shite..and most of yall know me. i get a little bit freaky...i twist around, touch the floor, pop the booty what have you, but in a restrained 28yr old sorta way.....
ok whatever
that was a crazy night into which i will go no further with details except to say that the girl who does live in the party house(i have since discovered that i do not) which is a spacious apartment on the top floor above both a metro station and a mall, as the one opens into the other..anyway this girl tried to go to sleep only to find a naked chileno in her bed...
so my roomate and i stumbled home pretty fucked up, spent much of the next day still drunk and drinkin water..and all my clothes were dirty...(aint no dryer up in this piece, and i already tried the deal where you hang shit up..took like a week and my jeans was all cold even after i ironed em, and all saggy like id been wearin em for two days straight), so anyway i tried to cart em off to a lavendaria over the weekend..but got there too late, desafortunamente...they close early on satidy and stay closed till monday. which makes pretty much no sense cause what else does one do on the weekend? one lavas ones ropa..anyway so they open today.
...so i traered my shit down there before school today and decided that since all my pants are dirty and i have preciosa to impress...that i was gonna show up in my pink tweed skirt, my hair all freshly washed and little bit of pink lipgloss and tan tights and the shoes many of you know as the cutest shoes of all time. no descrip will suffice so i will not try, instead i will later take a pic, of the shoes i mean...i am sufficiently wilted by my day to avoid the camera.
ahem
so. i drag my ass to school,where i see a few of the kids from my program. one is this dude (aka chico con cafe) with whom i have begun to establish a strangely competetive witty repartee, first based on the two of us vying for attention from la preciosa. so he was all you look cute today. and i was all. what up.
k
fast fwd. i been runnin around trying to figure out my sched, stopped in español for extranjeros, ostensibly to get my grade, caught a glimpse of profesora Natalia, she looked busy, waved..grades werent ready anyway.
so. im in the computer lab writing a respo to cheets via email when i glimpse at the clock, in military time of course and i think, oh shit. im late. got here three hours early to figure everything out and im fuckin late.
so i race out and im trying to find room twelve, doce for those in the know, in the facultad de letras bldg. it aint on the first floor, second tampoco, im racing upstairs muttering shit shit shit, third nothing but offices...back all the way down, over to geografia y historia right next door, they got a doce..but no..nobody there.
so i go back to the oh so nice to me esp for ex (hands getting tired and words so big) office where i say, nearly in tears podria ayudarme por favor? and they do. im a dork. right number right bldg, even had the right time, and this is tough cause its all double coded, in the schedule it will say like L/W 5
you gotta look that up, stand for lunes, miercoles( i think the w is to distinguish between the two ms or something) and the time listed as 5 is 1630 hasta 1720. or whatev. anyway so i had even got the time right, had figured out the business abt classes bleeding over from letras to geo next door. i had read the time that it actually was wrong..i looked at the computer saw that it was half past and freaked without doing enough math to figure out half past what.
so, long as i was there and in no rush i thank them profusely and ask about grades, they bring me the profesora (gracias a dios) she leans in and kisses my cheek, i get a little flustered cause i forget this happens here. not like she kissed me when i was her student. but now im not see? or not exactly. i dunno man, i aint figured it out but folks hella kiss here. i mean like you meet someone and the way you greet them isnt a handshake its a kiss. so im confused by her proximity i try to return this greeting in some perfunctory way, i try to return the sort of half hug that goes along with the kiss (god how i love the chilean way, im just not used to it yet) and end up just sort of clumsily putting one hand on her waist, im somehow both thrilled that i touched her, and that she let me touch her, and appalled that im so clumsy.
so she gives me back some assignments and tells me that someone told her they saw me on tv. which is true. they were filming the orientation i attended and this dude interviewed me after and i stumbled like an idiot and asked him to repeat each question at least once. heres hoping they edited that shit. so either she saw it or someone she knew, i wasnt getting it. she talk hella fast and make me real nervous...i keep wondering whats sposed to be subjunctive...and trying not to stare longinly..which can be tough..anyway so i got a good grade in the class, got kissed by natalia..and that was the highlight of my day.
...after that it was really cold, i got rained on, i was hungry, and didnt have enough time to go buscar for some food
then things went from bad to worse,i was sitting there sippin on a coffee outta a machine, yeah its crappy coffee but its not bad tasting, kinda like a cross bet coffee and cocoa, and its like 200 pesos, so thats like, i dunno, 40 cents.. and then one of the stray dogs that kicks it on campus tried to get freaky with me...
...this other dog was trying to fuck it (the first dog i mean) and it was trying to get away, and then starts its climbin on me like im a rescue its smelly ass or i dunno man, maybe it wanted a threesome...the dog starts to jump into my lap so im trying to push it away and the dog is drooling on my arm and then it starts fuckin biting me on my arm as i push it away, anyway i had gloves and its a small dog so it didnt hurt but im trying to come up with something in spanish that you can say to a smelly stray to make it go away (these mutts dont understand any english) and i got nothin so i just started yelling "fuck off!!! fuck off already" then i put down my coffee to get to me feet and get this fuckin stinky mutt off me and it goes for my coffee putting its nasty face all up in it and then leaping on my legs again, getting mud on the cutest shoes known to man as well as my lace patterned tan tights. so i tossed the coffee and went to class.
my only class today.
i mostly just sat there trying to understand everything that was being said, hoping that nobody wanted me to talk too much. cause when i did talk i managed to get my major wrong.. when the teacher asked me if i understood and i was like sure sure i do...
oh yeah. so in spanish im a fuckin deaf mute.
¿whatcha gonna do?
so now for the moment we have all been waiting for.....ladies and gents..
me gusta/no me gusta
me gusta:
chirimoyas (whatever the hell that is)
chilean cheek kisses
pisco sours
la profesora preciosa
no me gusta
rain
drizzle
cold
runny nose
people who get impatient with my broke ass spanish, and cut me off with the spanish equivalent of never mind, "no importa"
i had some high hopes for today...the weekend stretched out far too long after the madness of saturday night. and it was indeed madness, the party was elsewhere thank goodness...and i got a chance to talk to this girl i kinda dug..we had this long ass spanglish convo about all kinda shit for like an hour..then a bunch of the kids started dancing, the pisco was flowing and we decided that we oughtta go hit a club.. well i was saying my goodbyes when i realized the gringo dance crew had already salieron...so i rushed out of the place and hit the elevator...in the lobby i blurted out to the doorman "did you see a big group of gringos come through",he pointed to where they were waiting for a cab or two across the street. so i joined the crew and we headed to BellaVista, the party side of town, aparently..by the time we got to the place it was already after two..not really a problem here, we were out dancing until like 4am. so thats when i realized why everybody thinks americans are easy. its all on acount of how we dance. i swear to god. now dont get me wrong there is some fucking sexy latin dancing, i aint tryin to deny it...and hell of it, latin dancing that is. but the fact is that suckas at the clubs only bust out a little bit of that, i mean it informs all the movement and all the clubs are like all reggeton all the time as far as i can tell...with the occasional new wave 80s tunes, a few of the most popular songs, and some old madonna, prince, or the michael jackson circa billy jean thrown in for good measure, but mostly its reggeton...to which one basically adapts a cha cha cha sort of step plus a cumbia bit with the hips...its sort of latin americas answer to the white boy shuffle as far as i can tell..the point is that its pretty restrained for a crowded dance floor 3pisco sours into 3am friday night, feel me? course what the hell do i know? my ass aint been out dancing but once since i got here but i tell you what, us gringos cut a little corner of the dance floor out for ourselves and garnered some notice with our freaky maneuvers. this one girl in my program, she kinda quiet but funny, on the dance floor, she crazy..takes up enough space for like three people, randomly busts out the running man or other such random shite..and most of yall know me. i get a little bit freaky...i twist around, touch the floor, pop the booty what have you, but in a restrained 28yr old sorta way.....
ok whatever
that was a crazy night into which i will go no further with details except to say that the girl who does live in the party house(i have since discovered that i do not) which is a spacious apartment on the top floor above both a metro station and a mall, as the one opens into the other..anyway this girl tried to go to sleep only to find a naked chileno in her bed...
so my roomate and i stumbled home pretty fucked up, spent much of the next day still drunk and drinkin water..and all my clothes were dirty...(aint no dryer up in this piece, and i already tried the deal where you hang shit up..took like a week and my jeans was all cold even after i ironed em, and all saggy like id been wearin em for two days straight), so anyway i tried to cart em off to a lavendaria over the weekend..but got there too late, desafortunamente...they close early on satidy and stay closed till monday. which makes pretty much no sense cause what else does one do on the weekend? one lavas ones ropa..anyway so they open today.
...so i traered my shit down there before school today and decided that since all my pants are dirty and i have preciosa to impress...that i was gonna show up in my pink tweed skirt, my hair all freshly washed and little bit of pink lipgloss and tan tights and the shoes many of you know as the cutest shoes of all time. no descrip will suffice so i will not try, instead i will later take a pic, of the shoes i mean...i am sufficiently wilted by my day to avoid the camera.
ahem
so. i drag my ass to school,where i see a few of the kids from my program. one is this dude (aka chico con cafe) with whom i have begun to establish a strangely competetive witty repartee, first based on the two of us vying for attention from la preciosa. so he was all you look cute today. and i was all. what up.
k
fast fwd. i been runnin around trying to figure out my sched, stopped in español for extranjeros, ostensibly to get my grade, caught a glimpse of profesora Natalia, she looked busy, waved..grades werent ready anyway.
so. im in the computer lab writing a respo to cheets via email when i glimpse at the clock, in military time of course and i think, oh shit. im late. got here three hours early to figure everything out and im fuckin late.
so i race out and im trying to find room twelve, doce for those in the know, in the facultad de letras bldg. it aint on the first floor, second tampoco, im racing upstairs muttering shit shit shit, third nothing but offices...back all the way down, over to geografia y historia right next door, they got a doce..but no..nobody there.
so i go back to the oh so nice to me esp for ex (hands getting tired and words so big) office where i say, nearly in tears podria ayudarme por favor? and they do. im a dork. right number right bldg, even had the right time, and this is tough cause its all double coded, in the schedule it will say like L/W 5
you gotta look that up, stand for lunes, miercoles( i think the w is to distinguish between the two ms or something) and the time listed as 5 is 1630 hasta 1720. or whatev. anyway so i had even got the time right, had figured out the business abt classes bleeding over from letras to geo next door. i had read the time that it actually was wrong..i looked at the computer saw that it was half past and freaked without doing enough math to figure out half past what.
so, long as i was there and in no rush i thank them profusely and ask about grades, they bring me the profesora (gracias a dios) she leans in and kisses my cheek, i get a little flustered cause i forget this happens here. not like she kissed me when i was her student. but now im not see? or not exactly. i dunno man, i aint figured it out but folks hella kiss here. i mean like you meet someone and the way you greet them isnt a handshake its a kiss. so im confused by her proximity i try to return this greeting in some perfunctory way, i try to return the sort of half hug that goes along with the kiss (god how i love the chilean way, im just not used to it yet) and end up just sort of clumsily putting one hand on her waist, im somehow both thrilled that i touched her, and that she let me touch her, and appalled that im so clumsy.
so she gives me back some assignments and tells me that someone told her they saw me on tv. which is true. they were filming the orientation i attended and this dude interviewed me after and i stumbled like an idiot and asked him to repeat each question at least once. heres hoping they edited that shit. so either she saw it or someone she knew, i wasnt getting it. she talk hella fast and make me real nervous...i keep wondering whats sposed to be subjunctive...and trying not to stare longinly..which can be tough..anyway so i got a good grade in the class, got kissed by natalia..and that was the highlight of my day.
...after that it was really cold, i got rained on, i was hungry, and didnt have enough time to go buscar for some food
then things went from bad to worse,i was sitting there sippin on a coffee outta a machine, yeah its crappy coffee but its not bad tasting, kinda like a cross bet coffee and cocoa, and its like 200 pesos, so thats like, i dunno, 40 cents.. and then one of the stray dogs that kicks it on campus tried to get freaky with me...
...this other dog was trying to fuck it (the first dog i mean) and it was trying to get away, and then starts its climbin on me like im a rescue its smelly ass or i dunno man, maybe it wanted a threesome...the dog starts to jump into my lap so im trying to push it away and the dog is drooling on my arm and then it starts fuckin biting me on my arm as i push it away, anyway i had gloves and its a small dog so it didnt hurt but im trying to come up with something in spanish that you can say to a smelly stray to make it go away (these mutts dont understand any english) and i got nothin so i just started yelling "fuck off!!! fuck off already" then i put down my coffee to get to me feet and get this fuckin stinky mutt off me and it goes for my coffee putting its nasty face all up in it and then leaping on my legs again, getting mud on the cutest shoes known to man as well as my lace patterned tan tights. so i tossed the coffee and went to class.
my only class today.
i mostly just sat there trying to understand everything that was being said, hoping that nobody wanted me to talk too much. cause when i did talk i managed to get my major wrong.. when the teacher asked me if i understood and i was like sure sure i do...
oh yeah. so in spanish im a fuckin deaf mute.
¿whatcha gonna do?
so now for the moment we have all been waiting for.....ladies and gents..
me gusta/no me gusta
me gusta:
chirimoyas (whatever the hell that is)
chilean cheek kisses
pisco sours
la profesora preciosa
no me gusta
rain
drizzle
cold
runny nose
people who get impatient with my broke ass spanish, and cut me off with the spanish equivalent of never mind, "no importa"
posted by Rachel R. @ 5:28 PM
3 Comments:
At 8:25 AM,
Jeff Pollet said…
This kinda post reminds me of just how freakin' brave you are to go there and go to school not knowin' anybody and not (yet) speakin the lingo.
At 2:23 PM,
Jennifer said…
so much... so much to respond to...
first of all, i'm loven the spanglish, como: '...the gringo dance crew had already salieron' love it love it love you.
glad to hear you can take the girl out of the castro but not the... you know. that.
dancing until 4am?!?!
but
were
you
barefoot?
you did not answer me last time and i am curious about whether your dance-club ethics change in foreign countries. sure, she touches the floor, pops the booty, but does she hide the cutest shoes known to man behind a dj booth or under una mesa?
so yeah. un beso de la preciosa. SCORE, hombre ;)
At 11:30 AM,
Rachel R. said…
ok. just to set the record straight...i was wearing shoes, i did not get gang banged by chilean mutts..i was, somewhat assaulted, and they were small dogs..and thanks yall..
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