I've now had a dozen Spanish lessons and I don't feel much the wiser... OK, so I'm definitely understanding more and I'm able to read more and I'm writing better than a four-year old... but I just feel so... inept!
This week I'm back to four hours a day classes and I have two companions in my class: an Australian woman, Ella, who comes to South America to travel every year - doing lessons here and there while in towns; and a young (16yr old) Brazilian guy, Diego (from Sao Paulo), who is doing Spanish in school and decided to come here for two weeks to do Spanish lessons and enjoy the snow and mountains.
I also have a new teacher. She's pretty sweet but geez can she talk! In Spanish she outdoes me in English! Phew! She's from Spain but has been in Argentina for eight months so she speaks with Argentine Spanish pronunciation. Today was a bit frustrating (all the days seem to vary in degrees of frustration!) because she was explaining something in reponse to a question from Ella and she just bombarded us with like 10 minutes of non-stop Spanish - that we didn't understand much of - when she could have just said, "Because it is a rule in Spanish". Frikkin' hell!
Today I devoured a big whack of Spanish as we had a movie screening of the Argentine movie, 'El secreto de sus ojos' - the secret in their eyes. It's a major award-winning movie like at Toronto Film Festival and one in Spain... the main actor (Ricardo Darin) is reportedly the most famous actor in Argentina.
The movie was pretty good - although I didn't get all of it. Thank goodness they put on the Spanish subtitles 'cos the dude mumbles and they speak crazy-fast. I was delighted that I understood most of the words and could even figure out what tense (present, past perfect and past imperfect).
Tonight my homework for class is to read a newspaper article in Spanish and to write notes about it and to report this back in class tomorrow...
Still on the topic of Spanish... I'm a BIG, HUGE, MASSIVE fan of a band from Uruguay, "No Te Va Gustar" - translated the name of the band means, "You will not like (this)". Well, ME GUSTA MUCHO! One of the guys here got me on to them because the songs are great for pronunciation - clear and articulate (Buenos Aires pronunciation) - and working through the lyrics is a great way to expand my vocabulary. And it doesn't hurt any that the main guy, Emiliano - born in Buenos Aires but moved to Uruguay as a teen - is sweet on the eyes too... I like to listen to the songs while singing along to the lyrics.
The first song that I was introduced to was "Chau" (ciao - bye) - I've embedded the other one that I like below "Cero a la izquierda" - zero to the left. I've downloaded five of the official videos and have worked through them - going to grab more tonight! For more NTVG fabulousness, this is their YouTube Channel.
And finally, some pics from in-the-rain walks about town the past few days.
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| The wind was howling on Monday. I'm actually leaning backwards, into the wind. That behind me is not the ocean... No, no, it's the lake with big waves! |
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| I went walking with Simone. She works at the hostel and is from Germany. She has lived in Argentina previously (for a year) so she speaks Spanish and will be heading home at the end of this month. |
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| On our walk-about we found these stairs - there are more above the graffiti wall. Not the most desirable part of town.... |
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| Sniffing a flower... mural on a building here in the 'city'. |
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| I found this exercise area last week while out on a run. I wanted to check it out again. There's a running track around basketball courts and a volleyball court (just to the left). And, it turns out this is a trim park setup as there is a run trail loop and here and there are 'obstacles' fr exercises like pull ups, tricep dips etc. I'll give it a go when the weather clears. |
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