Ciudad de suerte

I forgot about my lucky story! Last Sunday I was walking home from taking the subway, and all I had in my wallet was a $100 bill and enough coins for one bus fare. But I needed to take a few more buses that day. The subway, though less direct, would also work, and had the added advantage that they always give you change on the subway. (As you might remember from earlier posts, there´s a dramatic coin shortage around here, though coins are necessary to take the buses. For example, they´ll let you through for free on the subway when they´re getting low on change.) Anyway, to get back to my conundrum: try and pay for a $1.10 subway ticket with a $100 bill? Are you joking? They give you angry looks when you try and pay for the ticket with a $10. So I was pretty stuck. I really needed to break that $100. That itself is not always easy, although the ATMs love to give them out.

I stopped by a pharmacy on the way home to pick up a few things I didn´t actually urgently need at the moment: shampoo, toothbrush, body wash. It added up to $32.30, and I handed the cashier my $100. "Got anything smaller?" he asked inevitably. Sorry, I told him, today I have nothing. He began to count out the change and had to call over another guy from the pharmacy section to ask for smaller bills and coins. "Do you have a $2?" he asked. Sorry, I said again, I really have nothing. Looking annoyed, he began to give me my change. A fifty. A ten. Seventy cents. And then he began dropping $1 coins into my eagerly outstretched hand. I wasn´t paying attention to how much change I was getting back, so after the first two I was already happy. Sweet, I thought, he doesn´t have any two-peso bills! But he kept going! He gave me $7 in coins! Ha ha, that´s what he got for hoarding his coins--Sunday came around and he was out of two- and five-peso bills. It was glorious. It made my day for the next three days.

Yesterday I went to Ciudad Emergente, a festival with concerts, art exhibitions, street dancing, poetry readings, etc. There were some walls being painted with graffiti, which was really cool to watch:



There were break dancers and poppers:




In one room we walked around and watched artists at work. One painter had several canvases covered in brightly-colored shapes. Three canvases were called "What my mother told me," and three were called "What my father told me," and he was soliciting quotes from the guests and writing them on the paintings. Some were sweet, some were sort of sad, and some were really funny. I added to the last category with a quote from my mom: "A la moda, aunque te jodas," which she always says when I complain about my feet hurting from my shoes. She always used to tell me that it meant, "Fashion, no matter what," but as I learned when I wrote it on an essay in Spanish class freshman year, that´s a very loose translation. The real translation involves a word I don´t want to use in my blog, ha ha.



My other favorite is also in that picture: "Fabi, por qué no vas al psicólogo?" which means, "Fabi, why don´t you go to the psychologist?"

I earned a culture point last night for watching Clockwork Orange. Well, only half a point so far because I got sleepy.