Latin Immersion

Contrary to what the books/teachers/etc say, people here seem to say Buen Dia rather than Buenos Dias.... although this may have something to do with the accent, many people hardly pronounce the letter 's' at all. Other things about Argentine spanish? Hmmm well they use an entirely different for of 'tu' and needs another conjugation and stress. Since it is a fairly informal place this (voseo) is quite important. But.... since 'tu' is used in much of the Spanish-speaking world, that is what they teach at the college.

So yes the college: I started classes on Monday and the first class was very full on as there was only me and the profesora. This was great for me however I left with a banging headache and went home for an early night. The rest of the week the class has included a really fun couple of guys from Sweden who most of the time want to talk about 'Los Argentinos'. Buenos Aires has pretty much the only gay scene in Latin America and my fellow students are very keen to learn the language (no prizes for guessing the motive!)

Susana is our teacher and has studied in London. Many people here love the English accent as most of the visitors are Swiss, German and of course from the States. Apart from being in love with Phil Collins, Susana has other fairly controversial views... most notably (for an Argentine) being on the Falklands. They go something along the lines of (and here I paraphrase) "they found 'em, they can 'av 'em". Susana was also keen to point out the many failings of the Argentine men over the gentlemanly, handsome ('muy lindo, muy muy lindo!'), respectful Englishman. All her words, by the way, not mine... and I won't translate what she wrote about the poor chaps from Buenos Aires.

The college is run by a team of about 10 people, mostly women and all seem to be under 30 or there abouts. They put a lot of effort into extra activities for the studants - much of which is a little too remeniscent of the cheery hell that Emily and I went through at Rocky River Ranch in Texas. The flip side is that the activities all have the alterior motive of improving our Spanish which is, of course, a good thing and the reason we are there.

Oh yes I have had my first steak! I met up with my Argy friend Matias from London who has just moved back here and when we were in the restaurant and I asked him to order for me. The steak came my itself - no salad, no potatoes, nada - the biggest piece of meat I have ever seen. I only ate half of it and still I felt I had eaten half a cow. What a bargain though! Starters and meat for 2 people plus wine was $80 pesos.... about 15 quid.

That is it from me for now apart from one little thing, a post-script and a note to pedants like me. Spelling and grammatical mistakes - I am writing this blog in Internet Cafés and am not re-reading what I have written, sorry in of advance of all the mistakes I will inevitable make.

Ok that's it from me, going to try and spear myself a cow (or rather, practise making errors in reflexive verbs). I hope everybody is well in Reino Unido!