of protests and spanish

Woke up this morning at 9 with the intention of heading down super-early to the building where my Europe/Latin American class is in order to cut other kids to the chase for the readings, which we have to photocopy on our own and of which there are only two copies that have been checked out all the other times I've tried to get a hold of them. But I felt crappy and fell back asleep and woke up at 10:30. I re-woke up at 10:30 after some crazy dreams that I don't remember other than bits and pieces--someone pulling up purple socks under black shoes, for example--made breakfast and headed down to class, which starts at 12. I got there and it turns out that I made the right choice to go back to bed; the building was deserted except for the guard and a guy sweeping the floors. Apparently there were big protests yesterday and classes had been cancelled for the day in that building. Frustrated that I'd gone all the way down there for no reason but happy not to have class, I went to Rosie's apartment to talk about an issue that came up last night. So we talked, and it was good, and then she had to go to class and I went and got a prosciutto pizza from that pizza place, which I ate by myself in 11 minutes. DAMN that place is good. Anyhow, then I went to COPA Spanish, which I thought was going to be three hours today to make up for the holiday we had last week. But, delight, that's been postponed til next week. So I hung around COPA for a while, talked to Vale and Gaby and various other people. I would have gone home, but I have class at 6:30 that's a lot closer to COPA than my house (as is everything else), so I decided it would be a waste of time. Rosie showed up after her afternoon class and then when the kids got out of the Spanish class after mine, a big group of us walked through this very chic and sleek-looking neighborhood to go get the "best ice cream in Chile" according to Joseph. It was damn good. I got a lúcuma milkshake and then Rosie and I hoofed it down the street that the ice cream parlor is on, which turns into the street that our class is on on the other side of Plaza Mayor. We were about two minutes late to class, but the only kids there when we got there were gringos. The Chileans started showing up about five minutes later and the prof himself was 15 minutes late. Sometimes this country is nice.

The class was "Chile, los chilenos y su cultura." It started off kind of badly, because the prof was saying a lot of things I either knew already or took to be self-evident, and I got bored, or he was saying things that I think are blatantly wrong (for example, Eastern philosophy says, "live every day like it's your last"--his exact words) and he seemed to be paying lipservice to a biocentric view of humanity while saying that he wasn't. But then he started talking about things like the Aymara (a Chilean indigenous group, from the north) view of time and its implications. That was very interesting. Also the class appears to be pretty easy--a short reading or activity each week and then a short essay on it and then a mid-length paper at the end. No tests, which I have a huge fear of in Spanish. Essays I can at least take my time on and consult many, many reference works.

I came home after that and ate gnocchi that Luz María had made and then I had another good talk with David. He's a really nice guy, today we talked about music, first about concerts and how expensive it is to see big acts in Chile because they come so rarely here (he kept saying Chile's "the end of the earth") and then we talked about Stomp and percussive acts and how interesting they can be. He's apparently seen Stomp twice and thinks there's an Israeli group that's similar but a lot more interesting, and an Argentinian group called "Mayura" that he really likes, too. I read a really, really interesting article today in the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell about pensions and the stupidity (sorry to use that word, but coming up with a list of more descriptive, complex ones would require more thought than I care to use at the moment) of the American system of forcing companies to pay for their own worker's benefits. Here's the link. I've got class tomorrow from 3-5:50 and OH! I just remembered some enormous, earth-shaking news. My friend Katie today told me, out of nowhere, that she'd heard about an ultimate league in Santiago!!!! AAAHHHH!!!!!!! I got really flushed and my heart started beating really fast when she told me that, which surprised me. I knew I'd missed ultimate, but I guess not really just HOW much until she told me. So anyhow, I went to the website today and there are league (league!) games on Thursdays and pickup on Sundays. I'm going to go tomorrow unless the league president emails me back saying that there's not actually anything going on tomorrow, whether I can play or not. Just to be around it again...YES!

So anyhow, class tomorrow from 3-5:50 and then maybe ultimate afterwards. The readings for that class (Cinematographic Language) are really hard. Oh well. Also, for anyone who's looking for a very intellectually challenging book that is very critical of American (United States) society, The Labyrinth of Solitude, by Octavio Paz, is for you. Damn. So that's all for now. 'Night.