Friday, June 19, 2009

Thursday Tango!

Famous last words.... I'm feeling prepared for my lesson, so I'll start writing about Thursday ;)

Woke up and made tostada and coffee - noticing the trend here? Made it to class a few minutes late, but who is counting. We talked some more about the job market, and then we prepared our final peer presentations about the infinitive and the gerund. Suprisingly difficult, it was not mine and Angie's finest moment, but we learned a lot through our attempts to consolidate the information.

For lunch, we decided to do empanadas. I hadn't had them all week, so I was game. We went to the hidden place on the street, and I got two carne suave and one cebolla y queso. They hit the spot.

After lunch, headed over to the House and just chilled. I don't remember what show I was watching, but at some point in the past week I've watched an epidsode of Desperate Housewives in Spanish and part of Billy Elliot. I finished up the last parts of my lesson about Texas, and I was set to go there. The rest of the afternoon passed by really relaxingly and quickly.

At 6 p.m., I was ready to teach about Texas! btw - this is a fun link with "Texas Talk" in case you were curious. I didn't know everything, but some of it was right on!

I had four students, and two of them were gung ho about Texas, and then two were kind of like, what is this crackpot lesson you're giving us? But I won them over with my friendly personality and southern drawl ;)

We filled in some facts about Texas, and then I got them to do the same about Argentina. They didn't even know everything about Argentina, so it was interesting. Then we read the Texas version of "Twas the Night before Christmas", and talked about some of the vocab in it. Finally, I went through some common Texas words, being careful to tell them that if they use these phrases they will be identified as "from the South." We went through howdy, ya'll, ain't (I pretty much told them not to use this one), and about the idea of losing the "g" at the end of words. We also discussed the meaning of drawl, and they were able to apply it to other Spanish accents.

It was so much fun b/c one of the students was like, ohhh, I've heard the word "howdy" before, but when I looked it up, it wasn't it the dictionary, so I thought it wasn't a word! And they said the same about ya'll. p.s. random fact. In Ireland, ye = yall.

So anyways, it was a lot of fun. Then I went home, and proceeded to get ready for the tango show. I had forgotten to tell Maria Laura that I was going to be leaving early, so she hadn't fixed food....sooooo, she just whipped me up a milanesa really quickly. I wasn't complaining. But she only had one, and since i eat two, I got a HUGE serving of calabaza (pumpkin/squash) on the side. It was a bit.

I met up with the group at the subte, and we all headed to the tango place. It was a bit of a walk after the subte, but fun company. One of the guys stepped into some dog poo, which was REALLY stinky. We arrived, and they gave us our passes just as we walked in, so they were just immediately taken back up. They seated us at two tables in the corner. It wasn't quite what I had expected, as I was expecting a show.

So we watched people dance for a while, then in t.v. fashion, they played flashy music and introduced each dance couple instructor. The beginner's instructors were introduced as an ex-couple. Like, they said "ex-marido"...exhusband. So that was either fake or really Weird. Rebe and I sat out the beginning, but then we jumped in halfway. Pues, we learned more in our other lessons, so it was really basic. I got to dance with a nice guy from Spain, who even after I repeated that I spoke Spanish insisted on directing me in English. He was nice, but extremely drunk, and so we danced very slowly as he meticulously counted out EACH of the 8 basic counts. Dave (guy from Road) and I got to dance too, and that was fun. We cheated and slipped in some of our steps from the other place. We should've done the intermediate lesson and learned something new.

Then, they just had a general dance, and then the "show" was supposed to start. But it ended up being a live band for like 30 minutes, and then one of the couples danced for like 10 minutes. So it wasn't quite what was expected, but it was enjoyable. The only downside was the perpetual dance hall curse: ratio of girls to boys, which was about 3to1. But I still got to dance some, so it was fun.

Stacy and I taxied back, and I've now adapted to where I ask the taximan to please wait until I'm inside the apartment, so there's a nifty tip for all of you travellers. I made some toast, tried to get on the Internet, and found out that my free wifi is now locked. So someone must've keyed in on my swiping of said Internet, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Probably going to have to resort to using the cable that threads throughout the entire house from the living room to my room. This could lead to me spending more time in the living room, which might be a nice change of scenery. Certainly the couch would be better than my bed.

whew, I'm glad I got Thursday documented before jetting. K, 8 minutes till my lesson.

Chau!

No comments:

Post a Comment