A Girl in the World

From the monthly archives:

April 2010

A "Crisis of Coins"

April 29, 2010

This place is the Wild Wild West.  Someone blatantly jumps in front of you in the grocery store queue.  A fist fight on the sidewalk.  Traffic jams at every major and non-major intersection between here and Texas.  Dishonest cabbies, apathetic customer service reps, irresponsible dog owners who refuse to pick up after their pets.  This [...]

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Quality, not quantity

April 29, 2010

The older we get, the more we need the people we knew when we were young. It’s 2:30 AM and we’ve just finished with the dishes from tonight’s dinner with friends.  Lots of wine, picadas and pizza.  Wow, it is so nice to be able to socialize with a few familiar faces.  Sometimes, this adventurous [...]

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Pesadillas

April 27, 2010

Nightmares. I’ve been having a bunch of them lately. In all sorts of forms and sizes. I remember killing someone slowly with a bread knife in the front seat of a car. Another time I was being chased by no one in particular. A few days ago the boy had to wake me up because [...]

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Sunday eve

April 25, 2010

It’s a crisp, breezy evening in this here BA. A perfectly clear night for spying on our neighbours.

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One day, the clouds just opened up…

April 24, 2010

… and poured full sentences of Castellano out of my mouth!  Full sentences!  Out of MY mouth! Like mute babies who all of a sudden start talking out of the blue, I started pulling words out of the air to build sensical phrases on the spot. Like a storm, it all just came raining down. [...]

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Riki, Shakira and the women of Sex and the City

April 21, 2010

After writing about my demoralizing weekend of not being able to communicate with the boy’s family, I’ve received lots of great advice on how I can speed up my uptake of Castellano.  Everything from more dinners out (great!), more local TV watching and tandem language partnering! I’ve decided that I’m going to look for the Spanish [...]

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Feelin’ on fire today

April 20, 2010

Ever have days when you feel like you’re totally in the zone of what you’re doing?  You’re lost, you’re engaged, you’re excited.  Well, that’s me today.  Since 9 AM I’ve been motoring away at all sorts of things that were on my list of things to do and it feels good to be so productive. [...]

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Crashing back down to earth

April 19, 2010

We spent the weekend in Mar del Plata to visit the boy’s family.  We had home-cooked food, spent time by the sea and generally relaxed for three days.  But my oh my, what three days of pure frustration they were for me. After 8 classes of Español para Extranjeros, I was feeling fantastic leaving Buenos [...]

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I am a hermit crab

April 15, 2010

… for here is Felipe’s traveling gift, his superpower, the secret weapon that renders him peerless: He can create a familiar habitat of reassuringly boring everyday practices for himself anyplace, if you just let him stay in one spot. – Elizabeth Gilbert, of her Brazilian lover Felipe, from ‘Committed’ After months of endless travel, I’ve [...]

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On passion

April 14, 2010

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders.  Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. – Antoine De Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince Seth Godin often talks about the importance and significance of tribes.  Macheads are a tribe.  Twitter [...]

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