February 2012
11 posts
finally wrote some new stories →
sorry it’s been awhile.
spunk
my host mother has a 9-year-old granddaughter named lisa who comes over to have dinner with us about once a week
we sit next to each other at the table, which can be rather fun
she exhibits, during one dinner, more spunk than i probably exhibit in a year
as a result, these dinners are the highlight of all dinners, especially as i begin to understand more of what is being said
i think some is...
arbitrary character limits will some day be the end of me
January 2012
36 posts
competing music
persistently, i find myself using headphones to listen to argentine music in an attempt to drown out the sounds of neighbors listening to music from the u.s.
i feel as though i might be able to offer some deeper thoughts on this contraposition of goals if my brain were not so exhausted. for now, i shall just be amused.
Watchmeid2go:
i know it’s kind of delayed, but this was for my application for IDEO’s fellowship program. The video prompt was to tell a short story revealing a little bit about myself. I couldn’t have done it without the help of my friends & family, so thanks Aaron, Natalie, Emmanuel, Morgen, Julie, Mom, Dad and Benno! It was a lot of fun+ glad I have the memories if anything!
mei, this is...
7 tags
tonight:
i ate dinner with my host family, but not my with roommate, who had already gone out on the town to tango the night away. my host mother did not seem terribly pleased that i had not chosen to do the same. this is not a new situation.
i excitedly used my newly acquired past-tense conjugation skills to explain that i waited in line for 2.5 hours after class today to get a sube card for the buses...
tomorrow, the past tense!
i suppose this is what it’s like to be excited about class
10 tags
public transit: sube card mania
(the saga continues; aka, i get more chances to try to figure out what’s going on)
sube cards, which are issued by the government free of charge, look generally like any other plastic credit card or key card. they can be loaded and reloaded with money and quickly tapped for payment at sensors when entering both buses and subway terminals in buenos aires. without them, one must...
5 tags
3 tags
painful conversation
some day soon, i will have the highly anticipated and celebrated pleasure of learning the most basic conjugation of verbs in the past tense. with this knowledge, i will get to stop saying “yo (infinitivo) en el pasado.”
it will be. so great. perhaps there will even be moments here and there when i do not feel completely and hopelessly incomprehensible while speaking.
7 tags
politics
tonight, cristina kirchner gave a speech of sorts that we watched together during dinner. admittedly, i can only ever understand so much of what’s going on in the news each day, and it’s not nearly as much as i’d like it to be. my best guess, however, is that the speech had something to do with cristina’s return since having her thyroid gland surgically removed in early...
7 tags
so. much. protein.
in case there were any small concerns about the protein content of last night’s dinner of boiled rice and potatoes, i wanted to report to anyone interested that tonight, i was presented with (and politely consumed) an entire plateful of lentils and hard boiled eggs.
and when i say “plateful,” i very much mean an enormous, heaping mountain of eggs and lentils.
after that,...
allergies
wouldn’t it be great if the body had some sort of conscious override system in place, whereby you could communicate with your involuntary systemic responses to tell them things like,
“no, body, the trees in this city are not going to kill you.”
and they would listen?
i think yes.
the prospect of sleeping on my floor seems increasingly attractive
if only there were some sort of magical, soft, bed-like surface that also retained coolness
that would be the best
____
i never would have imagined i’d be writing anything close to this in the middle of january
“This book gives me more information about penguins than I care to have.”
– In 1944 a children’s book club sent a volume about penguins to a 10-year-old girl, enclosing a card seeking her opinion.
She wrote, “This book gives me more information about penguins than I care to have.”
American diplomat Hugh Gibson called it the finest piece of literary criticism he had ever...
6 tags
“Any action can be practiced as an art, as a craft, or as drudgery. How does one...”
– -stephen nachmanovitch, free play
this is going to be a tough book not to quote in its entirety
every night is a new, sometimes unusual salad here.
tonight: lettuce, tomato, beets, bread and butter pickles, and balsamic. this is a combination i admittedly hope not to see again, but will nonetheless eat if it appears.
i can’t help but wonder if these combinations are new for my hosts as well.
i need to find some musicians in this city, quickly
but i need to learn spanish more quickly
if left suddenly without any digital means to share and reflect upon our personal experiences, and likewise to connect with one another, how would this generation cope?
would we quickly and easily find new ways? perhaps even find greater joy and richness in them? or would we feel completely lost and alone?
it does seem, often, that this realm has become essential to our social identity. why...
2 tags
“We have a sane part of our minds and an insane part. We negotiate between those...”
– Haruki Murakami (via theparisreview)
This is probably at the root of all of humankind’s sublime achievements and horrific failures.
(via publicradiointernational)
3 tags
new stories
the past few days have been more than a little overwhelming, so i quickly got off track from my daily buenos aires story goal. but, here are some new ones. with sound!
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stories →
each day, i will try to put some short story about buenos aires on this site.
this means that i will have to try to take at least one picture every day, and hopefully also start catching some pieces of sound to include. i’m a little nervous about this challenge, as i don’t typically like to hold a camera up to most anything, but i think it shall be more good than bad.
we shall...
“ehhh, hmmm. okay. you know, like, sharks and blood? yes? that’s how...”
– ana, an isa coordinator, endeavoring to appropriately characterize male-female relations
humorous but seemingly overstated at the same time. especially when included in 3 straight days of similar ideas.
4 tags
dear swahili,
you do nothing for me here. if you could, please stop trying to be a part of conversation. maybe, even, you would be kind enough to stay hidden in my mind, but somehow preserved and accessible for sometime later on. that’s not asking too much, is it? please think it over. thanks.
bridget
December 2011
33 posts
2 tags
cowbird →
i am so excited to be a part of this community
