This blog post is dedicated to Matt Chan cuz he pointed out that it's been 8 days since my last confession.

That part last time where I said my schedule is ok is a fib. It's great. I switched my satire class for a children's literature class, which meets 3 hrs a week instead of three and has only one paper at the end instead of a midterm, take-home, final, final paper, and 2 other papers. Life is good. But that's not the real reason why it's a good class. The real reason is today we read "Birolo the Mole and Everything That Could Have Fallen on His Head."(1) Here's how the book goes: A mole pokes his head out of his hole to see if the sun is out so he can go play. A "sausage that is not a sausage" falls on his head. He becomes upset, so he goes out on a search to find out who pooped on his head. In "are you my mother" style, Birolo goes around the barnyard to ask the animals if they pooped on his head. And sure enough, they each vehemently deny the accusation. And to prove it, they say "I don't poop like that, I poop like this," and then shows Birolo what their poop looks like. By pooping. (This is a picture book). After asking the pigeon, horse, cow, goat, and bunny, he finally gets to the houseflies. The houseflies taste the poop and tell Birolo that it was the dog! Birolo then goes and poops on the sleeping dog's head. THE END.

P.S. Read this book if you want to learn Spanish onomatopoeia for the pooping sounds of various animals, read this book. Hint: bunnies go "plip plip plip plip"

P.P.S. This class is worth 1.5 Tufts credits. That's the same as organic chemistry.


1.) Holzwarth, Werner (texto) y Erlbruch, Wolf (ilustraciones). Del Topito Birolo y de todo lo que pudo haberle caído en la cabeza. Traducción de Francisco Morales. Buenos Aires, Centro Editor de América Latina, 1991.

Two things to start out.

1) I'm pissed because Snakes on a Plane doesn't come out here until september 14, and they're calling it "Terror on Board". Balderdash.

2) My host dad works in film/tv and was the producer of the family film "Secret of the Andes." John Rhys-Davies was in this movie. John Rhys-Davies is a 7 foot tall actor, so they had to buy him a special big bed for him to sleep in during the week they were shooting in northern Argentina. When they were done filming, my host dad volunteered to take the bed home with him and he and my host mom are currently sleeping in it. Who is this John Rhys-Davies? You may know him as the actor who played Gimli in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or more importantly, the voice of MacBeth from Gargoyles. That's right, my host parents sleep in Gimli's bed.


Ok now that the important news is out of the way, onto boring things:

Classes started for real. My schedule is ok - I only have class tue, wed, thur, so I'll be able to travel on weekends, but I have more hours of class than I would have at Tufts taking 5 credits. I'll get over it. My classes are Psychology of the Personality, Argentine Literature, a Spanish class through my program veiled with the title "Human Rights in Argentina since 1973" and Problems of Argentine Literature, which is sort of like a satire class. The first three are going to be a piece of cake cuz they're at private universities, but the Problems class is going to destroy me because it's at the public university (It's backwards here - the public universities have a higher academic level than the private ones). It also assumes prior knowledge of Argentine literature. And it meets 6 hours a week. All at once.

UBA (University of Buenos Aires, aforementioned public university) is a real interesting specimen of culture. It is chronically underfunded by the government, so the building is really run down and the professors barely get paid. It is quite common for the professors to strike because they haven't been paid in months, or for students to strike for whatever reason. It is also a very political place - there are posters and signs and picketers and pamphleters everywhere. The police and military are not allowed to enter the school, so it creates an interesting atmosphere. I'll eventually take pictures and post them to better illustrate.

I think I'm going to a dude ranch this weekend. Let's see if I can get it organized tomorrow. If not, it will have to wait for a couple of weeks because next week COPA is going to Iguazú. Speaking of which, the Brazilians are stingy bastards. They charged me $111 for the tourist visa, but it's only valid for 4 days. That's the same they charge for a 5 year tourist visa. Jerks. Stupid latinamerican burocracy. It's not like I was planning on going to Brazil for longer than 4 days or anything. I just kinda want to complain about something. Everything's been so good so far.

That's enough blogation for now. Chauchau

I've been giving out the wrong cell phone number to people for the past 2 weeks.