Perdido

I got lost today. A lot.

I went on a run after getting back from the hospital. I went through the park near my house that borders the Universidad de Cordoba and turned on my workout playlist- one off, one on . Unfortunately, when I decided to keep going and check out the campus I turned "One More Time" on repeat unknowingly. Bright side was that by the time the song had played two and a half times I'd been running for about 13 minutes at my mile pace. Bummer was that after I checked why I'd been hearing the line "one more time" enough to never listen to that song again I looked around and realized that I'd run into an empty field, surrounded by blank walls, out of view of the skyscrapers. Oops. My planned (and pretty wimpy) 30 minute run turned into about two hours of trying to find my way back to these steps (12 flights of stairs):

I'd never been so happy to see a ferris wheel:

And then I got lost again.

Waiting for the bus to my first guitar lesson I was told that the bus didn't stop there anymore and I should walk 4 blocks east towards Plaza San Martin where most major lines stopped. But not my bus, so I walked another six blocks, called it quits and hailed a cab. The cab took me past the cross street I needed and I told the driver not to worry, I could walk. Turned out it was six blocks away and when I arrived at where the address should have been, I couldn't find it and I had no idea where I was. I ended up calling Jaunjo, my profe de guitarra and waiting for him to show me in.

The lesson itself was pretty dull because we basically went over some exercises to increase finger dexterity and to help learn finger picking correctly. Meaning, using at least four fingers (the logic there was that if you start learning two it's nearly impossible to incorporate more later- previous to this my logic had been 'if I can finger pick with two fingers then I'll be realllly surprised and pleased with myself and won't care').

Afterwards I went to 'Cerveza y Espanol' or 'Beer and Spanish', a group that gets together Tuesday and Thursday nights at bars or hostels to practice Spanish. And yep, I got lost again. The entrance to the hostel was unlit, about 3 feet wide and tucked between two practically identical doors, but when I finally found it I had real conversations with real people who really spoke Spanish! And we talked about complex things! And they understood me! And by the time I left- after a day talking at the hospital, with Cami, the cab driver, Juanjo, and then my new amigos de 'Cerveza y Espanol' I felt like I could really understand Spanish, and maybe even speak at the level of a little kid.

...Until I got to the bar where I was meeting my CFHI friends to watch the NBA finals. At which point I tried to talk in Spanish for about ten minutes, they answered in English, and everything I thought I had kind of slipped through the cracks. I feel like if I'm ever going to get to a point where I'm doing more than just translating in my head, I've got to switch over completely -reading/writing/speaking, todo. That said, the game was a lot of fun except for the fact that everyone in the room was cheering for the Spurs who lost an exceptionally close game in overtime. (Luckily I'm not very invested in sports :P). For all my complaining, it's been really nice to have a group of fast friends to go out with. I'm going to miss Sultana and Eric a lot when they leave at the end of this week, and Paige and the others at the end of next.

P.S. I have no idea why I'm up writing this at this hour- haha, tomorrow is going to be a rough morning at the hospital. Buenas noches!