Grapes Upside Down

16. Sour Grapes

~Madisen~

Tumbling out the doors of the cream-white humanities building of La Católica in Viña, Clara, Noah and I release a collective chorus of groans, sighs and expletives.

"That was soooo embarrassing." Clara rubs her temples for dramatic effect.

"Puta madre," curses Noah in a low voice. "I couldn't get one word out of my mouth with a decent pronunciation." We continue our venting in English for the next couple minutes.

"I messed up literally every single verb in the one sentence I spoke!" I bemoan. "First, I inverted poder and hubiera, then forgot to conjugate both poder and hacer."

"At least you threw in the subjunctive," Clara counters.

"Yeah, you sounded smarter than us two merely by using hubiera."

"I used it wrong though!" I protest with a giggle.

"Well, all I said was: 'I think... he shouldn't... sacrifice his own daughter... because... it's his daughter.' Gah! I'm such an idiot!" Clara buries her face in her hands, as we all fake cry in misery together.

Today's written exam in Greek Mythology was postponed until next week. Instead, our professor gave us a prompt on the spot and required everyone in the class to share their opinion aloud, going around the circle of sixteen students, Kindergarten show-and-tell style.

The three of us are the only exchange students in the course. Our Chilean classmates didn't bother to dissimulate their stares and smirks as each of us, in turn, mutilated the Spanish language along with our dignity.

"Let's go!" urges Noah. "After this white Honda."

He gestures for us to pay attention as we prepare to cross a busy street, placing a protective hand on each of our shoulders before we dart in front of a speeding taxi that is still a ways down the road.

"At this point, I'm hoping to get plowed down by a micro," mutters Clara, and I snort in agreement.

"I can't wait to meet your host family!"

"Yeah," Clara deadpans as we flag down a colectivo. "We might eat lonche sometime before 9:00pm."

"What! I'm starving," Noah laments.

"When are you not starving?" He grins at me when I tease him for his insatiable appetite.

There's a new level of friendly energy between us ever since we spent this past Saturday evening together. I had waken up alone at midnight in Noah's bed, then stumbled into the living room to discover him taking notes on Colección de mitología griega: Edición dorada--the real text, not the "CliffsNotes" version. Endearingly studious in his black-rimmed glasses, pencil against his mouth in concentration, I found it both touching and embarrassing that he left me snoring in his room rather than waking me up.

The three of us pile into the back of the black colectivo, which is driven by the first female driver I've seen here. A guy on a unicycle juggling bowling pins zips in front of us, and our driver accelerates towards him before braking inches from his singular wheel. He appears unperturbed as I gasp and clutch several of Noah's limbs, as if that will save the other man's life.

"It gets progressively stranger here with each passing day," I remark under my breath in English, leaning my head against Noah's shoulder.

"Increasingly more bizarre, as well as humiliating," Clara assents.

"I concur," Noah sighs. "We're doing a group project in physics, and every time I try to participate, my partners just tell me not to worry about it. They act like I don't know any Spanish."