So, it's been raining here for like three days straight, which is a fun time. It's hard to do things while it's raining in a city where most of the transportation involves walking. Like, you can take a bus or the subway, or the train, but it's a little hard to get to the specific point where you need to be when everything is on a schedule and fixed route.
I'm not like a huge fan of rain, mostly because I have to walk in it, and then everything I own gets wet. I finally remembered to bring my umbrella on Sunday when we went out to brunch, but previous encounters with rain have been less fortunate.
Walking here in this city in general is an experience, ranging from interesting to downright dangerous. (Usually not that dangerous, don't worry.) But when you add in the element of rain, I feel like it gets to a whole new level of chaos. All of a sudden, the traffic "laws" that were barely followed in the first place are completely neglected. It's like rain makes it impossible to see out of windshields or something. Pedestrians wander aimlessly through crosswalks, even when there are cars coming, people jump out in the middle of the street to avoid puddles or holes in the sidewalks, and children fight each other with their overly large umbrellas.
Also, there aren't super good drains here, so like water pools quickly and easily. The streets where people actually drive are usually okay, but by any curb, or any slight dip in the road, there can be nearly five inches of water. And like, cars aren't really that considerate, so if you're standing by a curb, patiently waiting to cross the street, like a good pedestrian, cars will zoom right past you and spray the water all over your nice legs. And then you will be cold and ANGRY.
I kind of always didn't believe that cars spraying water at people was a thing that actually happened. You see it in movies, where the scene is super sad, and some person has just been broken up with by their one true love, and it's before the part where the other person realizes that they've made some huge mistake and they have to rush back to their ex-lover before they realize they're too good for the other person, and so the one person is just standing on the corner of the street in the rain, because of course, if it's a sad scene there's gotta be rain, and in order to distract from the heteronormativity of the scene (because there have been thousands of these scenes in movies before this one, obviously, and the producers have to make sure their love scene stands out from the crowd) a car will pass by screeching its tires and inevitably add insult to injury by splashing gallons of sad rainwater upon the unsuspecting distraught abandoned person. And are you just so upset by the loss of your true love that you can's see a car zooming past you? I mean, to be fair, it's usually dark in these scenes, and also you're probably already soaking wet from the heavy downpour, but really though. You should be able to avoid this problem altogether.
But now I feel more sympathy, because it's hard to know whether or not a car will actually hit the puddle that is directly in front of you, or if it will glide gently past into the rainy abyss. It's all a mystery.
One of my favorite things about walking in the rain is counting how many little old ladies have gone out of their house without their umbrellas, and instead just tie a plastic bag around their head like a makeshift shower cap. I mean, I guess if the thing they're worried about is their hair, getting wet, they've solved that problem! I've seen like five or six of these ladies, and all their jackets are soaking wet, but their hair is perfect and fabulous, so I guess they know what they're doing.
One of the weird things about rain and living in an apartment is that it sounds a lot different from rain landing on a house. In my house, the easiest way to know if it's raining is to go into the hallway or bathroom and LISTEN FOR THE RAIN ON THE SKYLIGHT YES WE HAVE SKYLIGHTS THEY ARE COOL AND YOU'RE JEALOUS. But here, I'm on the fifth floor of an eleven floor building. But my window in my room goes to the outside, so I can hear the rain. But it just sounds like someone is inconsistently pouring a bucket of water down a metal slide. And sometimes it sounds like hail. It so hard to tell how much it's actually raining. Unless you stick your head out the window, which I could do here, because there are no screens. It seems kind of dangerous. Someone could fall out of one of those things.
I hope it stops raining soon, because I'm getting tired of all these puddles, and having to watch out for people who aren't paying attention to where they're walking because the rain has covered their glasses in tiny little drops of moisture, and now they can't see (usually that's me it's fine). And also, I'm leaving on Wednesday to go on a trip, and I really want it to be nice weather! But also the trip is like 14 hours away by bus, so there is a possibility that the weather there is not the same as it is here. But also also, with all this rain and humidity, my clothes that my host mom washes for me are not drying, and if they don't dry, I won't have anything to pack for my trip, and therefore will not have anything to wear, which could probably ruin the experience more than a little bad weather. Who knows.
PS: Foods? I don't even know what I eat anymore. I'm sorry.
- Unidentified food from a sketchy grocery store - they looked like onion rings, but were definitely not onion rings?
- Dulce de leche with brownies ice cream
- Mashed potatoes + "goulash" - does it count if I've had these things separately before, but this time they're mixed together? And have weird vegetables? It's like a hot dish. Don't worry
- A waffle with cheese - surprisingly good, despite my distrust of cheese in general
- A chocolate candy shaped like a turtle filled with what tasted like a new and interesting form of the cream in those delicious Cadbury Creme Eggs that I miss super a lot, especially because it's almost Easter
- Remember how I'm going to spend all of Easter riding a bus home from Mendoza? What a good way to celebrate
- Bon-bons - I probably have had something like this before, but I'm going to count it because they were very weird and I don't remember anything else that I've eaten in the last two weeks
PSS: Here is a picture of Xander sharing a tiny chair with my host mom's granddaughter's doll, whose name is Bebé. (Which means Baby for anyone who couldn't figure that out). Bebé is even worse at looking at the camera than Xander is!
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