My two month academic hiatus has officially come to an end, and while I don't officially start classes until mid-March, I have to endure five grueling hours of intensive Spanish five days a week. It's not too bad so far, but I'm being reminded everyday of how screwed I'm going to be when classes actually start, and I'll be taking a full course load of PoliSci classes...in Spanish...with Argentines. Ugh.
Yesterday was our first day of class, and we spent the mayoría of class going over el español rioplatense: the Spanish spoken in Argentina and Uruguay. Everyone warned me about the thick Argentine accent, but I didn't realize that it's more than just the accent that makes el español rioplatense difficult to understand. I might as well erase tú from my vocabulary, forget everything I knew about second person singular present verb conjugations, and change my Y's and double L's to a "sh"/"j" hybrid sort of sound. I still feel ridiculous when I attempt to sound porteña, yet when I (attempt to) speak (relatively) normally, I stick out like a sore thumb.
The past two days I have gone with my classmates to Confiteria Chantilly for our (35 minute) lunch break where they have the most delicious empanadas I have had in BA--which is saying a lot, considering I have been fed empanadas every day I've been here. You take your meals para llevar, and since we can't eat in class (starvation), we often find ourselves downing our empanadas while we power walk back to UB. And since eating while walking is something that is practically never done in Argentina, I am really struggling to blend in as a porteña.
I got a cell phone! However it took two full days to connect to the network and I still am having issues with it...such as remembering my own phone number.
I have yet to venture on the Subte (metro) or Colectivo (bus). BA is big and I am small and I don't speak porteña so I figure I'll just wait until someone can guide me through the overwhelming labyrinth of mass transit before I end up God only knows where. I say God only knows where because I actually don't know enough about BA to figure where I'd end up.
BA is new, big, exciting, and fun, but I still can't believe I'm here! There is so much I want to do already, both in BA and in South America, and I cannot wait to finally get into my routine and explore everything!
Learning how to Tango tomorrow...oh boy. I can hear everyone laughing already.
Chau,
audgentina.
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