Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Hands Off!

Sorry for being off the air for so long. I guess blogs don’t write themselves when I’m sitting around watching Law and Order. Rose would kill me if she knew I’m wasting my time here. It doesn’t help that I don’t have internet access at home. I feel weird for going to the café next door because the owner always has to unplug their cooler for me to use my computer. At first I thought he was just being overly generous but then I figured out that he really wants to ask me out for dinner. My roommate thinks he’s cute, but since he doesn’t speak English and I only know maybe ten words in Spanish I’ve been trying to avoid having an awkward dinner. I still take Pilate classes three times a week and teach occasional private lesson here and there. For the most part I’m just preoccupied with figuring out what I should have for lunch and dinner. I still enjoy walking under the trees with pink flowers around Plaza San Martin.

I was a bit annoyed today. As I rushed to the subway station 5 minutes before my scheduled Pilate class, the place was completely packed and I had to let two trains go by because it was physically impossible for me to squeeze in. By the time I finally was squeezing the air out of me in the third train I was already 20 minutes late. I decided to go downtown to pick up Rose’s costume made shoes instead. The owner, who usually makes all the shoes, was not in. The woman behind the counter pointed at the note on the receipt and told me to come back after the 11th. She was so convincing that I actually left the store thinking it was before March 11th only to turn back after few steps just to correct her with my date planner opened to today, March 12th. When I’m right, I’m right. I can be a little obsessive like that. When I talked to the woman again she pretended not to speak English and said that she doesn’t know where the shoes are (in Spanish, of course). The note on the receipt was in English, damn it. My roommate Loren is right, “you can’t get anything done in this country unless you threaten to kill someone.”

I went back to PilateSol for the class at 1pm. It was relaxing as usual accept we had to do our exercises with drum beats from the nearby protest, something about teachers and students. Denis is back vacation and she loves to work with me to improve her English.

I got even more annoyed after the class. On my way home some guy was walking the opposite direction on the sidewalk and grabbed my ass. I rarely complain about this city except this problem with guys on the street. Everywhere I go I get guys who are whistling at me saying stupid things. Last year some guy grabbed my ass as he went by on his bicycle. For some reason I have absolutely no tolerance for this kind of behavior and it irritates me every time it happens. I would stab them if I carried a pocked knife with me. Few guys I told this problem to think it’s funny. I wanted to stab them too. So what if I have a little anger issues. If you are empathetic to murderers you deserve to be punished too. I’m more infuriated by the fact that many men, even if they don’t do such things themselves, don’t think there’s a problem. Well, it’s called sexual harassment and I have a big problem with it.

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