minor miseries

Although I am from Minnesota and used to brutal winters, I am still finding myself quite cold these days in Buenos Aires, mostly due to the fact that the heat does not work in my apartment and we don´t yet have a heater installed in my classroom - so it´s coats, sometimes hat and scarves, all day. Sometimes the bus driver for my one hour-plus commute decides to not put the heat on as well. So I am at the point of constant chilled to the bone cold that makes you not want to get out of bed in the morning or take a shower. (I do both out of necessity of course.) I am hoping that my shoulder muscles do not freeze into a permanently hunched position; that mixed in with one bumpy neck-jerking busride makes for a rather jacked trapezius.

The energy I put toward warding off all the flourescent snotty-nose diseases floating around the classroom makes me rather tired as well. I´ve never seen more unattended runny noses and nose-picker-and-then-eat-´ems. The beso farewell has now turned into an air kiss, a safe three inches (or more, depending on the condition of the nose and amount of boogers eaten) away from the child. It´s time to start giving lessons on proper nasal hygeine. While we watched a video on swine flu, and the topic at one point was on keeping your fingers out of your orifices, I saw a boy pick his nose and wipe it in the girl´s poneytail sitting in from of him, and then look around to see if anyone was watching. It was gross, but I´ve seen worse.

Another minor misery I´ve encountered lately is the new flatscreen tv that has been installed on the ceiling of my charter bus. So now to and from school I am bombarded with music videos, advertisements for clothing stores and restaurants, and a rap song about a man that had to kill his wife because she got too fat. I nearly had a fit this morning when I was trying to read while getting blasted by the overhead speakers. I asked the busdriver to please turn the volume down (first he turned off the radio he had been listening to as well), that it was too noisy, but he said he couldn´t, there was no volume. Then I asked him to mute it or turn it off, he said he couldn´t. I sat down, wrapped my scarf around my head and put my hat on to try and block out the noise, but it didn´t help. I decided that if this continues, I will have to get some huge Bose headphones that completely block out all noise. Am I overreacting? I got over the toxic cleaner and now this? Maybe I have an oversensitivity problem but is it so much to ask to not have psychotic rap songs blasting in your ears at 8am?

Ok, I am ranting a bit. I complain about these things and then see someone in a doorway sleeping with a very thin blanket over him and wonder how on earth this person manages to stay warm. And what makes him get out of bed in the morning?