School Days

Bienvenidos! It´s Friday afternoon and I´ve just completed my first week with BridgeLinguatec. This is a school that certifies teachers in teaching English as a foreign language through an intensive four week course. I´m really delving into the fundamentals of the English language even more so than I did in college and as a teacher - if you can believe that! Pretty soon you´ll be finding emails sent back to you with my corrections and my linguistical jargon threaded throughout it. That was a joke, so don´t be afraid to write me because I won´t do that. There are seven students in this class and class starts at 10 every morning. In the morning, Spanish speakers come to learn from us seven students. We take turns and teach a beginner class and an advanced class. My first rotation is with a beginner class and they don´t know any English whatsoever. I´m so impressed with them because they stay for two hours as one of us takes the first hour and another takes the second hour. Their minds have got to be fried by the end of the session, but they still come back the next day. Today was my first lesson and I taught them how to express themselves by teaching them vocabulary, pronunciation, and then sentence structure. We had a lot of fun today because I had to use a lot of charades to define some of the words that they´ve never heard before. It felt really good to hear them use a language that they´re hungry for. So unlike the States in where I was pulling teeth to get kids to come to school.

Unfortunately for this month, I´m so engulfed into studying the English language deeper that I am unable to study my Spanish; however, I still practice before I go to school and at night.

I´ve finally established a good schedule here now. I wake up at 7:30 or 8; eat breakfast at the cafe downstairs in which they´ve already remembered what I want every morning (a small cup of orange juice, café con léche, and two medialunas - about the best croissants ever). I ride a bike I bought last week to school and make it there around 9 or a little after. The students come at 10 and if you´re teaching, then you teach; otherwise you observe the other teachers to give feedback later. Lunch is at 1 and the teachers find something around the neighborhood of San Telmo - anything from parrilla (grilled food) to pizza to empanadas (a little bit like calzones but way better and smaller). We come back to school and instructors at the school give us linguistic lessons until 5. I usually stay for an hour and study or prepare for lessons. I get home and take a nap until about 7 or 8; I wake up and do a little more work and then go grab dinner around 9 to 10´ish (that´s when restaurants open for dinner). After that, I explore the city with other teachers and usually end up just walking around until we turn in around 2 am. It´s a lot different but I don´t feel so rushed to be places or do anything while I´m not at school. I´m not tired because I split up my sleep schedule as all other porteños do here as well. Pretty crazy, huh?

I almost dreamt in Spanish last night; it was pretty strange.

I have an address that I´ll be at until February 1st:

Scott Lyman
c/o Mali Charlaff
BridgeTEFL Argentina
Defensa 715
Capital Federal
C1065AAM
Argentina

I still don´t have a phone yet, but I´m going to leave here and look for just a local one to use. Phones here are strange. It costs money on top of your plan to receive or make calls; isn´t that what a cell phone plan is for? Basically, everyone just text messages to avoid those extra charges, so I´ll just be using it locally. I imagine in February once I find an apartment, I´ll get a landline set up.

One last thing...the internet in Argentina is extremely sluggish so uploading pictures is next to impossible. It takes like 10 minutes for one and then the internet shuts off; otherwise, there´d be some pictures in here. So until then, I hope all is well and I´ll talk with you later. Ciaó.

Scott