Thursday, March 20, 2008

My Life In Buenos Aires, Argentina

Lady in subway station knitting It's tired and I'm late, so this is not going to be fancy. There will be no story, no wittiness, no jokes, and no double meanings. I'm simply gong to tell you what I've been up to here. No mas.

When I was in Montevideo, Uruguay, I met another traveler who said he had been to language school in Buenos Aires and recommended it. I figured it might be a good idea to kick start my language skills with some formal training, so I called one of the schools he mentioned—COINED—and signed up for two weeks. I wanted the greatest impact from my time here, so I signed up for the immersive program. That includes four hours of classroom instruction per day (class size of one handful) and one hour of private instruction, also per day, of course. The school also arranged for me to stay Lucía helping Kelly from Portlandwith a "host family." I'm not one to throw quotes around willy-nilly, so they are there for a reason. I will inform you as to that reason shortly.

My schedule has gone like so: get up at around 8:00, shower, get dressed, walk about five minutes to the subway (Jose Hernandez station), hop on, sweat, become a temporary sardine, exit the subway about ten stops later—twenty minutes, or so—after it arrives at the downtown station (9 de Julio), walk about ten minutes to Waiting for the next trainthe school, take a class with a few other students for four hours, take an hour lunch (maybe) and then take a one-hour private class.

Without exception, my teachers have been excellent. I had one teacher for the first week's primary class—Lucía—and another this past week—Patricio. I had one teacher for the first week's private class—Melina—and three more this week—Marcela, Ciro, and Leticia—all different, but excellent.

The school has issues with scheduling which have made a lot of students upset. This weekend is Santa Semana—a big holiday here—and we're losing a day of instruction this week and and the students Patricio and my second week of classwho are at the school next week will miss a day, as the holiday goes from Friday through Monday. Scheduling is one of the most complex problems in Computer  Science, but there does exist software for it which does a reasonable job of solving it. I don't know how the school does things, but it ain't working so well. A few students who scheduled and paid for the regular instruction and private instruction never even got the private class last week. There was also a lot of confusion amongst the students and teachers about how the holidays would be handled. As it turns out, we paid for five days of classes and got only four days of instruction.

The subway line I take to school-Linea D There are also events that the school organizes so the students can see the city and get to know the culture a bit. They need to be more proactive, as I never even heard about the events or knew who was going or when. Apparently, the guy who used to take care of these events was fired some time back. I think that was a mistake.

The teachers are even fed up with things. Some of them are teaching privately on their own time. If any of you needs a good private Spanish teacher in Buenos Aires, let me know and I can give you some names. These folks are excellent teachers and they love what they do.

People dashing for the train I just finished my last day of class today. There is so much that I had forgotten since high school and college. I feel horribly inadequate. I feel like I don't understand much and can't say much. This next week, I will be taking private classes outside the school. I'm thinking I'll do a couple hours a day.

Now for the "host family." I was expecting to sit down to dinner each night with a family of four and talk about the kids' school, life in Buenos Aires, and Latin American The subway pulling inculture. I was also expecting good meals, as I've been paying extra to receive  breakfast and dinner. Well, it's a single lady who's not around much and who just wants to earn an extra buck. The food she provides is total crap. Very disappointing.

The exception to the general lousiness of the living situation is one of the other students staying here. Her name is Sanne and she's from Stockholm, Sweden. She's a sweetheart. She studied for five weeks at COINED and is now volunteering at a house for troubled or disadvantaged girls for several months. We've done a few things Inside a subway cararound town and had several really good conversations about language, culture, and various and sundry other topics of interest.

This next week, I'll be staying in a hostel called Avenue Hostel very near the school. The benefit of that location is that I'll be downtown. That will make it very easy to see some sights that I've missed so far. Also, I can get together more easily with some good friends I've made at school—mostly Brazilians (there are tons of them at the school). I will take a different subway line to my teacher's apartment for private Spanish lessons than I've been taking thus far. It's apparently an historical line, so that should be interesting.

Tomorrow, my good friend, Edson—a brazileño, of course—and I will be bumming My brazilian friendsaround town. I'll report on that, if I have anything of interest to say. In the evening, I'll be going to some sort of  show with a couple brazileñas. Saturday, no plans, yet. Sunday, the brazileñas and I will be going to a futbol game—that's the plan, anyway. We need to figure out if we can get tickets. The game in question is Velez v. River. Stay tuned.

I will check out of this apartment Sunday morning, move directly to the hostel, stay there for one week, then head for Santiago, Chile. After that, Patagonia and Chile for a month, or so.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you are having fun. Thanks for all the helpful information you gave me a few weeks back. Enjoy Patagonia it looks to be amazing. Since I will not be in Chile till July I am not too sure about whether or not it is feasible to get there via public transportation as I have heard/read a lot of things shut down or run very sporadically during the winter. Enjoy.

Justin

Cheryl Mingo said...

Hey, have you been to "La Boca" or "Las Barrancas" yet? Don't miss them! (Buenos Aires) Adrian will be getting on you about going to a River game instead of Boca! You crack me up saying something is "downtown". All of Buenos Aires seems like downtown!!Since you learned to Salsa in Brazil are you planning on learning to Tango in Argentina? :)