Thursday, October 4, 2012

Can't win them all

It was midterms week.

That alone should tell you what kind of week I've had. Stressful. Five tests in four days. Not fun. At least I now have a three day weekend to decompress. This is probably going to be a long post because a lot has happened since I last blogged. 

The exams went well. Some better than others, naturally. But overall, I felt pretty good. Hopefully worth the lack of sleep. 

But having a week long marathon of lacking sleep inevitable leads to problems. For example, I kind of broke a computer at work the other day. In my defense, the default language is Basque and I don't read enough Basque to decode the error message that flashes for two seconds before the computer dies. And naturally, the big boss was in the office that day. It was only the second time that he and I have been in the office at the same time. Great impression no?

Also today my Basque class finished late so I knew I was really late to my Mythology class. I got to the building and my teacher was in the hallway. Uh oh. I'd previously told him that my class before is far away and that makes it just about impossible to to be on time. He knows the teacher and the class so he kindly permits me five minutes of leeway. But today I was way more than five minutes late. But, being Basque himself, was very impressed I managed to say, "barkatu berandu iristeagatik. Nire klasea berandu bukatuda." Which in English is, "sorry for arriving late. My class finished late." 

There's been a call for a student strike a week from today. We'll see how that turns out. Likely the program director will call for us to continue class but I'm not so sure the university will be accessible with a student strike. Today they had a press release and so we could barely get in the building and it's not even the day yet. More on that when I know more.

I got a huge cut on my leg walking home today. A small child on a bike ran over another small child who stopped for no apparent reason. I was distracted by this while a third small child holding a dog leash walked around me and the dog went the other way before coming back to the child, making a loop around my leg and then the dog tried to run after the crashing small children and the leash tighten around my leg and cut it. The parents were completely horrified. They made me sit down and drink water and have me a bandaid. They were really sorry about their kids and sorry about the dog and sorry about the bandaid not being big enough. I was four blocks from home and I was just like I want to go home but I smiled and reassured the parents it wasn't a big deal. Accidents happen and whatever.

This was maybe five minutes after I had extreme difficulties with the post office. The stamp vending machine ate my money and I was really frustrated. Then I completely fail at telling the postal workers what happened. But that got sorted so it was ok. Then a woman came in with a stack of postcards and made some weird gestures. I must have given her a pretty puzzled look because she reverted to English and was like "I need to send these. Can I use this machine?" I actually startled her when I told her in English the machine I was using just for selling stamps, not sending mail. Then I had to admit the somewhat embarrassing fact that I don't actually know where you mail stuff in the post office itself, despite being here for a month. I told her that I actually just use the post boxes in the street. There was an ad featuring one so I pointed to it and told her that's what they look like. My mom got the one postcard I have managed to mail so I'm going to assume that worked. 

Also, there is absolutely no running water in the entire building and quite possibly the entire block. I got home and my host sister told me that if I wanted water for drinking or washing my hands or brushing my teeth to use the large bottled water in the kitchen because there wasn't any. She had asked some neighbors and none of them had water either. Naturally.

But it's just not been my week.

At least my host family is comprised of the coolest people ever. They make everything very bearable. 

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