Hola mi amigos!
Wow. Wow. Wow. I am a little in love with Buenos Aires and
being on holiday. What a good idea it was to go on an exciting detour through
South America before the big move to London!
So my first week of classes is over and I wish I could stay
here for another month to work on my Spanish. My teacher Andrea is an excellent
teacher and so Argentinian which makes it a lot of fun. We are a small group of
3 students so I get to be a massive nerd and ask millions of questions. I have
to be careful not to always be the first one to answer all of her questions,
it’s just I’m so excited to actually know what she is talking about! Don’t get
the wrong idea, I am still very much a beginner but I feel like I’ve learnt a
LOT in 1 week. Maybe I do have a knack for languages? Nah…it’s just the cheap
but delicious Argentinian wine I just had for afternoon tea that has buoyed my
confidence. But immersion is definitely the way for me to learn a language.
We went to a movie night at school last night which was
awesome. The director of the school runs it and he very generously brought some
delicious snacks and wine for us to feast on while we discussed Argentinian
cinema. Well...I didn’t exactly discuss;
I listened VERY attentively to what everyone else was saying. I am worried I
stare at everyone a little too intensely when they speak Spanish and that I
might come across as a little creepy.
It’s just that I have to be so switched on to catch any vocab and I find
that blinking disrupts my internal translation process. Half an hour into our
mini tutorial the translation switch in my brain turned off without my consent
(it does that when I’m tired) so I resigned myself to concentrating on the
delicious Argentinian snacks that I was eating. Not such a bad transfer of
focus right? After the discussion we watched the film Nueve Reinas
(translation: Nine Queens) by Fabian Bielinsky. I highly recommend it if you
feel like watching a hilarious Argentinian crime thriller. It’s in the vein of
Lock, stock and two smoking barrels and the like. I’ll definitely be going to
movie night if it’s on again next week. Another activity from the school’s
social calendar was a tour to Palermo, a fairly upmarket barrio (suburb) in BA.
Unfortunately I understood about 10 words from the tour guide as she spoke way
too fast but it didn’t matter too much as I enjoyed exploring the Botanical
Gardens.
Our apartment in San Telmo is great and it feels like home
even though I’ve only been here a week. There are four of us at the moment but
we might be getting a 5th housemate soon. There is Paul (Dutch),
Christoph (German) and another Claire (French). We have started to create a new
language that is a mix of Dutch, French, Spanish and English at the table,
especially when it’s tarea (homework) time. All three have a much better level
of Spanish than me and I blame Australia’s low emphasis on learning languages.
Bloody Europeans speak 3 languages by the time they are 5 years old and are
just learning a few extra ones because they feel like it. I’ve decided that one
day my children will speak at least 6 languages to make up for all of the times
people have asked me how many languages I speak and I have had to answer “one”.
I do seem to have one thing up on my housemates and that is
my sense of direction. While Paul is lovely and very good at making sure
everyone is ok, he has gotten us lost quite a few times. Perhaps he was just
letting me come to the rescue and reveal my one talent. It’s really great to
walk around our neighbourhood and the city as there is always so much to look
at. BA is super easy to navigate as it is set out in a grid and there are these
amazing diagonal streets that help you get exactly to where you need in the shortest
amount of time possible. The only problem is, French Claire and I are not that
good at following diagonal streets in the opposite direction. For some reason
we come back from school a different way each time.
So I’ve ticked a few things of my BA list including watching
some tango in a restaurant as you can see in my photos. Amazing to watch. I
still haven’t had a tango lesson yet but I’ll try to organise something for
next week.
We’re off to Uruguay for the long weekend so I’m sure I'll be back on here with some more news and photos very soon!
Chao chicos!
Hola Claire,
ReplyDeleteHow great it is to get this insight into your first week. This time last week you had just taken off and I was feeling bereft of your close presence and good company. What a brilliant start to your south American travels. It is a sad thing that our isolation coupled with our dominant Anglo Saxon history here in the Antipodes has given rise to a lack of 'need' for languages other than English in our education system. I hope you do find a way to encourage multilingualism in your children. They say immersion is often the best way. Nice to you have found such a multicultural household. What fun to be trying to Talk together and learn together. Have fun in Uruguay and I do hope there are some Argentinians celebrating their National Day in Uruguay too and you haven't missed all the fiestas behind for the weekend! Xx su madre amorosa
Ciao chica bella!
ReplyDeleteSounds like you're having such a great time! A class of three is great, you must be learning heaps! What are you going to do in Uruguay? I hope to see some photos of you dancing tango next week! :-) Also, how do I follow your blog so that I get an email if you have a new post?
xxooo