Linea A

The last couple of days I've been busy trying to find a place to live and trying to register for my Spanish class. Registration was this morning between 10am and 12pm, they told me when I stopped by the faculty for info the other day. So, I arrive at 10am and there's this huge line. I wait in line for an hour for them to give me a little slip of paper and tell me to come back at 5pm. Little did I know yes, registration started at 10am, but people came and started lining up at 8am. Of course they didn't mention that when I came by for information.

In the line I was chatting with this German girl and we were like, "This is so disorganized! Why did we have to wait an hour for a piece of paper? Why didn't they just hand it to us when we arrived? Why is there only one girl handing out the pieces of paper? Why did the Argentinian guy in front of us who went up and yelled at the girl get to whisk his foreigner girlfriend through they line and into the placement test? It would be so simple to organize this better.."

And then we looked at each other and were like, " Oh my God we're SO German and Canadian! We can't handle this lack of organization. We have to relax or it's going to be a long two months here in Argentina..." Of course then we went for a coffee and the waiter messed up our order and then ignored us when we asked him to fix it.

But my unexpected 6 hours to kill have given me some time to do something I've been wanting to do: ride the Subway Line A. Line A of Buenos Aires' Subway system ( El Subte) has wooden-panelled cars dating from way back, complete with dim lamps and doors you have to manually open yourself. One of the stations on the line, Peru, has been refurbished to look like it would have back in the day, with tiled walls and floors and advertisements from the 30's. My travel book described riding on Line A as rumbling down the tracks inside an old wooden wardrobe, and I have to say it's a pretty apt description. Well, maybe more like a wardrobe filled with businessmen commuting and youngsters listening to their iPods.