Last Wednesday and Thursday were fun but quite low-key. Wednesday I just woke up, ate breakfast, and took the bus to class. I have to say that I’m becoming a pro at riding the bus; I have yet to have any more cospeles issues, and I am now an expert at the phrase ¿Va a la universitaria? I had a 312 listening quiz and a 318 composition test on Wednesday, but overall classes went ok. After class I had SO much fun! I had scheduled to meet up with my listening partner, and we really enjoyed getting to know each other. We went to one of the cafés on campus and bought some empanadas for lunch. Her name is Victoria, or Vicky, she is 21, originally from Córdoba, and a literature major. She has long strawberry blonde hair and is super pretty (one of the times we hang out I will definitely take a picture and put it up). She didn’t have class until 4:00 and we talked all three hours until then. We have many common interests and talked about things from traveling to boyfriends to our dreams for our futures. She has been studying English since she was very young and continually amazes me at how well she is at it. She told me that she has always taken classes, although not necessarily always through school. Her mom thought that it was very important for her to learn the language, so for much of her life she has gone above and beyond to attend classes outside of her regular school hours. Even now she leaves her house in the suburbs at 6:30 on Tuesday and Thursday mornings to attend English lessons downtown for two hours before she starts her actual classes at the university in the afternoons. Our entire visit was extremely enjoyable, and when we had to leave I already couldn’t wait for the next one. We scheduled to meet again between our classes on Monday, and her family has already invited me to go spend a weekend with them when I can. She told me that her dad is planning a big asado (Argentine barbecue) for me whenever I can make it to their house! Anyways, after we parted I walked home and took a small siesta and then worked on homework. Thursday we had our quiz over the first of our four chapters in 312, so it was another serious class day. It’s so crazy how quickly we are moving through the material! I know we spend hours in the classroom every day and I feel like I have learned so much. But at the same time whereas a chapter took about a month last semester in 312K, we have already finished one in 312L in exactly a week! I had not yet mentioned it, but a guy named Wes had started trying around Monday to get a group together to take a weekend trip to Mendoza, and I decided that I wanted to go. Mendoza is a place that, since starting to learn about Argentina, I have really wanted to go to and I figured that although it would cost money I have already paid quite a bit to be here and I did not just want to sit around the apartment for another weekend. So, after classes on Thursday, our group of 15 caravanned in taxis over to Córdoba’s main bus station to purchase our bus tickets for the weekend. The bus terminal is crazy! There is a myriad of counters for different bus lines and different choices and levels of buses, such as camas (beds) and semi-camas (semi-beds) and just basic ones. It took a while to move us all through the line, but after about 30-45 minutes we all had our round-trip tickets to Mendoza! After the chaos of the bus station I walked back to campus and left my things in the program office, went on a run in the park, and then bought some coffee and did some homework at a campus café. At 5:00 about half of the students in the program (the other half were still in class and have their lesson following ours) met up at Casa Verde and walked for about half an hour to the place where we have our tango lessons. It was an interesting place; the top part looks like a very nice restaurant and the room where our lessons are held is downstairs in the basement. I didn’t know what to expect for the lessons but it ended up being a lot of fun! I was very surprised by the boys in our group and their extreme enthusiasm and concentration. In our group they actually outnumbered us girls! We switched partners every few minutes so everyone could get a chance to dance with everyone else. Although, as with all forms of dance, it is much harder to learn than it looks, after an hour and a half we could all (or at least all of us thought we could) do some of the basic steps pretty well and everyone was looking forward to our lesson next Thursday. After the lesson was over I walked home, ate dinner with Zulema, talked to Sergio for a while, and then went to bed semi-early to prepare myself for the next three days.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment