Day 32: The Success Abroad

Day number 2 with a classmate. Classes were good, we had a teacher that I had not met before subbing for Marta, called María Paula. She was very nice; she had just come back from a vacation to Brazil and was very tanned, but we worked well and the only problem that we had was when Marcelo came in for the second period, he had no idea what we had covered because she only put in the notes that we had used Libro 4. But that was no big issue. Marcelo and Germán were getting excited all day for the football game in the afternoon between Argentina and Germany, in Germany.

I got home just before kick-off, and I watched the game (of course supporting Argentina), and in the 45th minute of the first half Argentina scored the first and only goal of the match. There will be some very happy faces tomorrow at school...although Dirk is from Germany, so class with Marcelo might prove interesting, depending on how passionate Dirk is for soccer.

This evening Paula invited a group around to her new apartment in the Recoleta district. Besides me, there was Kai, a German student currently working as a resident in a hospital here, Flor, the teacher from school, Eduardo, the co-owner of the school, and Andrés who is Paula's roommate. We had a lovely dinner of homemade empanadas along with some hotdogs and some special cheese dip and some red wine. It was a really nice relaxed evening, we had planned on going out to some club or party, but we opted for a more chill evening. It was nice just to talk about general life with them, essentially all in Spanish. I had a hard time keeping up with some of the conversation because it was really quick, but it was really good practice, and whenever I had a question they happily gave me a quick translation or synonym. I've found that synonyms are really helpful for me, because translating the word each time I use it slows down the speech pattern, but if I get a feel for the word still in Spanish, I feel that I can understand the word and use it more easily, which is interesting.

I have pictures of some (unfortunately not all) of us so you all can finally put a face to the names Paula, Flor as well as Andrés and Kai.

Paula y Yo

Andrés y Paula

We took an excessive amount of terrible photos

Kai and Flor strike a pose

    Andrés using a makeshift ironing board

But one of the highlights of my day was when during my break between the first and second classes the package arrived at the school! I am super to have two things from the package in particular: a small pocket electric dictionary, and my retainer. I have missed those two things dearly and have used them both already.