mood: sigh
music: little kids shouting at each other over videogames in the cybercafe
random word: cricket
First, I want to thank you all for being awesome and the best friends that I have ever and I´m convinced will ever have. I want to hug each and every one of you all at once but my arms aren´t long enough. Oh yeah, and I´m in Uruguay. Details.
Ok, so here´s something I wrote on Saturday. Don´t read the next entry in my Cata Blog because it´s an abridged version of this.
I think the weather has conspired to take over my mood and is possibly looking for a means to control my entire future. You see, today was the first truly beautiful day I´ve had here. It may be that I needed to survive 2 weeks before I would find myself un-overwhelmed enough to be able tp look around and see myself in my new surroundings, see life and find beauty in it. Or it may just be that today was the first day that I saw the sun in the Southern Hemisphere. It´s a relief to know that it does actually shine here and quite comforting that it looks and feels just as wonderful here as it does at home, plus, I would argue (at least today) that it may actually have a slightly-higher-than-usual capacity to boost one´s mood.
Another reason today was beautiful is that it was a day of firsts. Granted, every day in these past 2 weeks has been filled with firsts. But today was a day of simple firsts. Of firsts that make you smile just knowing they´re firsts. For example, if was the first time I opened my bedroom window and tasted fresh air that actually made me want to take off my fleece blanket and let the sun touch my pale skin that has been hiding away beneath layers of wool, flannel and fleece ever since I got here. I t was the first time I squeezed my own orange juice by hand and used oranges that didn´t have to cross half the country or an ocean to arrive at my kitchen. It was the first day I spent alone. Not with my host brother or sister, not with other girls from the Midd program, just with myself. When I´m by myself, I notice myself more and occasionally even find that I´m not such bad company.
I went to the Saturday Fair, where I sepnt a couple of hours wondering around and seeing far too many things I wanted. I have to keep reminding myself that this is not the Hebron Harvest Fair or the Big E that comes around once a year so you have to buy everything all at once. This fair is here every Saturday all year, so it´s fun to just looks and tuck ideas in the back of your mind for next week, for Christmas, for whenever. It is hard, however, not to buy things when you see them, especially since everything claims to be one clearance. Like that green poncho. Or that red sweater. Whatever, stuff at the fair is cheap and I didn´t bring enough winter clothes, so I forgive myself. More or less.
As the fair was wrapping up, I couldn´t bare the thought of hopping on an omnibus and leaving the sun to got home and do nothing. So I bought 3 mandarinas for about 12 cents, sat on a bench and ate 2 of them while pondering what to do with the remainder of this gorgeous day. My host mother had said the fair was too far to walk to, but I decided to pull out my map and have a look for myself. After calculating that it would probabaly take anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half depending on how fast I walked and how many times I got lost and comparing that to the amount of time it could potentially take me to find the bus stop, I opted to go for a stroll.
It was quite a lovely stroll. Generall uneventful, with a few minor exceptions. There was a group of volunteers that approached me to ask for a donation. The looked to be 20-somethings, so I asked them what organization they were with and they said that they built houses for the homeless of Montevideo. It sounded like an interesting project and a decent way to meet people, so I took down the website to check out later. Then, there was a dead pigeon and for about 10 seconds, I freaked out that I might get avion flu from looking at it, but that passed pretty quickly and I was able to recover my sanity. Overall, it was a nice walk, and when I got home, I was feeling pretty good about myself for having not gotten lost.
Then, I pulled out my key, and to my dismay, no matter how many times I turned it in the lock, the door refused to budge. Feeling like a fool, I tried for probably about 10 minutes and finally gave up. I called my host mother, brother and sister but no one answered. I knew it would be getting dark soon, so I headed back in the direction I had just come from. I would walk 20 minutes to the mall, where I could hang out until I managed to get in touch with someone at my house. The mall is full of people and open late, a good refuge.
I would have been less concerned, had I not watched one of my friends get robbed last night. I still can´t decide if it was becuase I was ridiculously stupid or ridiculously lucky that I didn´t get robbed too. We were sitting outside on a bench waiting for a friend to show up to go dancing. This boy, who couldn´t have been older than 14, sat down next to my friend Steph. He had a scarf pulled up over his mouth and his speech was so soft and muffled that I couldn´t understand a word he was saying. I figured he was just asking for money, but when I saw Steph reach into her wallet and give him everything she had, I grew suspicious. It wasn´t until I asked her why she gave him so much that she told me he had threatened to kill her. Like I said, I was incredibly stupid for not knowing what was going on but also incredibly lucky. For once, being clueless actually paid off; the theif just ignored me. Nevertheless, I certainly learned my lesson and will not sit down on any benches in any parks at 1:00 in the morning with a cellphone out, practically begging sketchy characters to assault me.
With the events of last night still fresh in my mind, I decided it would be best to head to the mall before it got top dark. On the way there, I spent a lot of time debating whether or not I should go back and try that key just one more time. I knew I would look like a lunatic if I told my host mother my key was broken and she came back to only to discover it worked perfectly. Let´s face it, it wouldn´t be the first time something lame like that happened to me. Flashback to me standing in the camer shop telling the man that I had absolutely no idea why the camera had suddenly stopped working and it taking him approximately 2.7 seconds to flip the battery over and solve the crisis free of charge.
Emerging from my daydream, I noticed that in the past not-too-many-minutes, the sky had gone from sapphire with a warm, golden sun to grey and a fog so dense I could barely see to cross the street had descended over the city out of nowhere. While I´d been playing with my god-forsaken jey, the weather, just like my day and confidence level, had done an about-face. It was then that I decided the weather was conspiring against me.
No matter, I was not going to let the color or the sky ruin my day, much less decide my fate. So I found a discreet, little bar at the far end of the mall and sat myself down at a corner table. I ordered a glass of red wine, took out the memo pad where I write down what bus to take where and began to write. Even though it was only 6:00 and people don´t eat dinner here until 10:00, I was starving. Having no idea what it was but being indescribably attracted to it, I ordered ¨Princess Chicken.¨ It turned out to be chicken with strawberries and jam on top, which was somehow amazing! They don´t kick you out of restaurants here when you´re done eating, which is nice because I have nowhere to go. I just ordered a strawberry milkshake and plan on staying until the mall closes or I hear from my host family. I would have said until my pen ran out of ink, but that already happened and I had to ask the waiter for a new one.
