Friday, 3 July part 2

The elevators were just like lifts in flats in India. You pull doors open and shut yourself. I reunited with Susana and met one of her seven daughters (there are two sons and thirty-something grandkids between the nine kids), Maria la Paz, or Paz for short. I unpacked my suitcase and found a lot of stuff sopping wet, but at least it was all there. I finally met Julieta, and she´s every bit as nice as her mom. She also has a dog named Canela, for her cinnamon colored fur. She´s a guard dog. Her first action was to growl and bark at me. Terrified, I kept saying her name, which was what Susana had told me to do when I saw her. Susana then added that I need to say it lovingly, not panicked, so I tried to inject as much affection as I could into it. The dog was still hyper active, but her tail was wagging. What she really wants was hugs and whatnot. She sidled up to me like a drunken coed at a frat party, and I was the frat boy.

The four of us ate a dinner of gnocchi and soy milanesa together while Canela tried to get past Julieta to partake in it. Afterward, we broke out the Ghiradelli chocolate I´d brought with me in that suitcase.

I watched some TV with Julieta, mostly Argentine equivalents of American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, etc. Then we watched the last bit of Cinderella III. Back in America at one point this summer, Cinderella 3 was a Toon Disney Big Movie Show one evening, and my cousin Manali and I began to watch it over ice cream. Unfortunately, Mom came home and demanded to know why I was watching kid´s shows. I had bitten back the urge to answer that it was because she wouldn´t let me watch adult shows.

Fast forward to Thursday night. Cinderella III was dubbed in Spanish and her name was now Cenicienta. Part III has been updated from the original Cinderella to suit the feminist sensibilities of girls like me. Cinderella/Cenicienta kicked some ass and Anastasia, one of the two ugly stepsisters, was a sympathetic character. I understood the dialogue way better than La belle et la bete, or Harry Potter et le prisonnier dÁzkaban.