Learn Spanish Travel Spanish Blog

     Today was the first day of our last week of Spanish classes.  I didn’t know quite what to expect.  For the first two weeks I had the same teacher and mostly the same classmates.  Today I was in a new classroom with a new teacher and all new classmates save one (and she may move).  The class is ranked as 1B, which I assume is the part right after 1A, but you can never be absolutely positive about these things.  We started out doing regular verbs, which was what we started with 2 weeks ago, so I thought they had moved me back a grade or two, but in the afternoon we moved to irregular verbs, so maybe it was all just for review before we move on to something new.

     I think I’m the dumbest kid in the class.  I KNOW that I have the weakest vocabulary.  There are four others and me.  One is from France, one from Germany, one from Brazil and one from Holland.  The Holland lady was in my last class.  I like her.  The class is about 24 years old again, except for the lady from France, who appears to be early 40s.  I’m probably the oldest person at the school.  (I  should get points just for guts).  Not everyone in the class speaks English (not that it matters).

     Only the Holland person’s vocabulary is anywhere near mine, and hers is better.  The rest can actually speak Spanish.  I’m assuming that they don’t know the grammar, since that’s what they test you on when you start at the school, and we ARE in the same class.  And this time, instead of 95%, the class is 100% Spanish (or, here in Argentina, Spanitalianish), so I am at a definite disadvantage.  La professora is Juliet, by the way (the J is an H).  It seems to be easier for me to hear a woman’s voice if it isn’t too soft, and our room is now upstairs, away from the street and much smaller, so the acoustics are far better.  Hurray. 

    I have to say that it’s been an interesting experience.  I was starting to feel that maybe I wasn’t learning all that much, but Sherry says that I’m using far more sentences (and sometimes correctly) than I was using before (me want water).  And I’m getting the main points of most of the billboards and the rolling bar at the bottom of the tv news programs.  I still can’t hear or say much, but that’s still a frustration for Sherry and she’s faaaaarrrrrrrrrrr more advanced than I am.  And I guess I’m setting the foundation for the rest.  Sherry is really just getting to the point that the grammar is less of an issue for her now, and her classes are mostly conversation.  That would be nice. I’m glad I told everyone that I just wanted to be a good tourist, who could make himself understood and could understand most of the answers, rather than be perfect and be able to have meaningful conversations.  You DO remember me saying that, don’t you? Well, me no go be perfect.  Nunca. 

     And I also want to say how proud I am of Sherry.  Hey, this is difficult.  She’s stuck with it, put in a lot of hours (a LOT of hours) and put herself out there.  And, what?  16 months later? and she’s navigating pretty well.  Really, I’m so proud of her. 

    Okay, all that being said…. Love it here….. learning a lot…… interesting….  yada yada yada.  I’m ready to come home.  Sherry is too.   Our brains are fried.  With the exception of Hawaii and Paris, we have never taken a vacation when we weren’t tired and ready to go home after about 10 days.  And we’ve always been that way, so I don’t think it’s just age.  I probably lasted 14 days this time, but now I’m tired.  It’s a tiring city.  Fast paced.  And we’ ve hit the ground running every day at 7:30 and kept it up all day every day. 

     And I’ll tell you something else….  Travel makes you appreciate home.  The U.S. has it’s problems (boy, does it ever), but I love my country.  I suppose everyone feels that way about their home.   The comfortable language, knowing how things work and having a routine.  That’s a big part of it for everyone, no matter where they are from.  But I just feel very fortunate to have the life I have.  My family was poor.  When my dad left the mountains of NC as a young man, at the end of the Great Depression, he didn’t know there had been a depression.  They made their own clothes, grew their own food, and lived in a place that is still a little isolated today, but was almost totally cut off back then.  Neither of my parents went beyond grade  nine. Sherry’s grandmother was an immigrant who came here with very little.  And here we are…. traveling the world.  We live in a nice home in a nice place with nice friends and get to live the life we want (if you don’t count wanting to win the big one).  Someone once said to me (and I think he was being condescending because  he thought of himself as up and coming), “You’ve got a nice little life here”.  Well, by golly, I do.  Quite a nice little life, thank you.  And I know that we’ve worked hard and used our heads, and all, but still….    thank you to the US of A for making it possible.  My hope is that we can extend that opportunity to everyone in our society.  Barrack, don’t let us down.

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