Endings and Beginnings

Amazing weekend.  Graduated with Merit, had many delicious meals, hung out with awesome people.  5 interviews lined up so far.  Plans all set for Mendoza (wine country) Friday night- Tuesday morning.  Awesome people have started to leave already, which is sad, so I'm trying not to think about it.

Went to La Boca today.  It's a touristy area with brightly colored buildings and lots of restaurants and little shops.  Despite the cold, gray weather, everything looked adorable.  Tango dancers performed in the streets to live music.  Pictures forthcoming.  After that, i went straight to my first interview.   The pay isn't great, but it could be a pretty good job.  I have to go back tomorrow to present a sample lesson (thank God i have some from EBC!), and then I'll find out if I got the job.  We shall see!

FYI: I don't think lots of people are going to be sending me random presents, but if you do (and i would encourage it!), DON'T use Fed-Ex or UPS.  Stick with regular post.  For some reason, Fed-Ex packages get held up at the airport (1 hr and $50peso cab ride away).  I'm also not sure I'll ever get notification that I HAVE a package, even if I do.  Lame, but who knows.

Love and miss you all, besos!

To clarify

Ok guys, I am not leaving BsAs any time soon.  It's amazing and I love it and I just got here.  I'm just saying that maybe in the future I would like to go somewhere else, and I COULD with TEFL certification.  Don't worry though, I'll definitely be here long enough for everyone to come visit!

Whaaaat

We've had two job workshops this week, one dealing with working in Buenos Aires and one about jobs in other cities.  The international one really amazed me.  I can literally go anywhere and live for six months, a year, or even more.  Every place our teacher talked about sounded amazing, and I want to go everywhere! Every city needs TEFL teachers, even in countries where most people speak English. It's hard, because BsAs is great, but I was definitely tempted by the descriptions of some of the other cities.   Is this my life right now?

I'm not homeless!

I found an apartment today! After many unreturned emails/phone calls and a sketchy time last Saturday, I finally found a place I’m excited about, and it’s only about a block away from the hostel I’m staying in now (in a really great area of town). It’s pretty much the smallest apartment ever, and the room is DEFINITELY the smallest room that exists in the world (if I were living under the stairs at the condo in Carmel, I’d probably have more space), but it’s bright and clean. It also has heat and air conditioning, an adorable balcony with pullout shades, a nice bathroom with a full sized shower and bidet, a washing machine (!!!), and soon a new fridge. There’s a little TV in my room too, and we have cable and Wi-Fi. Everything is included for ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS A MONTH!
My future roommate seems really nice. She’s a waitress, so we’ll have nearly opposite schedules, but hopefully I’ll see her occasionally! She speaks pretty much no English, so I’m excited/scared to see if we can live together. Her current roommate is going home to Peru, but I met her today, and she was nice too. The real selling point for me is that they have a PUPPY! It’s a tiny black fuzzy thing, named (I think) Eve. When she told me the dog’s name, it sounded like “eh-beh,” which I suppose could actually be a lot of things.
I’m so excited to finally be moving into a real apartment. Some of the other people from EBC are sticking around, and they have an apartment in San Telmo, so hopefully I’ll get to see them sometimes. I hope everything will work out. This first month has been so amazing, I can’t really ask for more.

Chau, besos!

Last night's dinner

How good is Armenian food?

la vida

      Today I visited the first of my potential apartments in BsAs.  It was probably the sketchiest experience I’ve had in a long time (and that’s saying a lot)!  I managed to find the first building with no problems (of COURSE the landlord was late, it’s Argentime).  It was a tiiiiiny little box with few windows to speak of.  The people who live there seem really cool, and “my” room was big, but overall it was a dump.  They had a tiny adorable gatita though.  I’m not a cat person, but I liked this one.  The location of the place was great: in San Telmo, near la Avenida 9 de Julio and many shops and restaurants.  The price was right too ($300/month), but it was just soooo small and dark.

            The next place, nearby but not in quite as good a location, was a lot brighter.  It was a little bigger, and had a balcony from which you could see the whole neighborhood.  Cute!  The bedrooms were tiny though, and the apartment doesn’t have internet at the moment (pretty much the only thing I NEED the apartment to have).  Another issue is that the current residents are leaving in December, so I would have to move too.  It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but I don’t really want to have to go through this process again in a few months.

            Between these two visits, the landlord disappeared multiple times to go talk to other tenants.  He was really nice, and apologized for keeping me waiting, but he definitely took his sweet time.  At one point, he left for twenty minutes and returned with a broken (?) water heater.  He put it in his scummy little car, and then we had to drive to his friend’s (?) house to deliver it, making me wait another half hour.  Neither place was worth that much time and sketchiness.  Tomorrow, I’m supposed to see a place right around the corner from la residencia (where I’m living now).  Hopefully it’ll be better.  I wanted to change neighborhoods, but I do like this area a lot, so I wouldn’t mind staying if the apartment looks good.  We’ll see!

            Tonight, a bunch of us are going to a Middle Eastern restaurant for dinner.  Roxanne is leaving soon, and she wanted to go.  I’m excited for falafel!  She had a goodbye dinner with more people on Thursday, because the majority of the kids living here went to Iguazu Falls this weekend.  I have a LOT of homework to finish up; we’re starting our last week of classes!  I can’t believe how quickly this month has gone by.  I hope the rest of my stay in BsAs is as good as the first few weeks!

Skydiving

Skydiving is amazing!  I survived, but it was pretty scary for a minute there.  I wasn’t all that anxious until my tandem instructor opened the door to the airplane, and I could see the ground two miles below me.  I panicked for a moment, then the instructor pushed me out of the plane, and we started to fall.  The most surprising thing about free falling is that it doesn’t feel like falling, it feels like being pushed up by a big

 gust of air.  It was hard to breathe, and my hair was whipping around, but there was not stomach-drop the way there is on big roller coasters.

            Once we let the parachute out, the ride down was very peaceful.  We floated gently down to the landing site, and didn’t even have to run too much when we reached the ground.  I would love to do it again if I ever get the chance.

            Jason jumped right after I did.  The company videoed us as we fell, his video turned out great!  I haven’t seen mine yet, because it was

n’t ready when we had to leave, but they’ve promised to send it to me at the hostel.

            It was a long day for us.  I left the hostel at 8 am, met Jason at 8:30, and we got to Aero Parc de la Plata at about 9:30.  It would have been sooner, but there was a lot of waiting around for the other six people jumping today: a group of Israelis visiting BsAs for a few weeks.  (They were really nice, but mostly spoke to each other in Hebrew.)  Only one or two people can jump at a time, because the plane is small and each jumper needs a tandem instructor and a cameraman with him (or her).  Here’s a picture of the plane, maybe Pete can tell us what kind it is?  They had a bunch of planes at the aero park (I definitely saw a Cessna 172), but I forgot to ask what this one was.

            We were up in the air for about 30 minutes total, mostly in the plane.  We got about a minute of free fall, then about 10 minutes floating down with the parachute.  The harnesses are NOT comfortable, and they make you arch your back strangely, but it kept me alive, so whatever.  From the air, we could see BsAs, the oil refinery, and the edge of the Rio de la Plata.

            Well, I’m a lot poorer now, and very tired, but it was an amazing day over all.  I would highly recommend falling out of planes whenever possible!

First Weekend!

            My first weekend in Buenos Aires was a great success.  On Friday night, I watched some of the other TEFL students eat steaks at Payuca (I’ve been told they were pretty good), then we went to the boliche (discoteque) Liquid.  It was a little bit lame.  I liked the 90s dance music, but no one else seemed to.  The bar area was crowded, and no one was dancing, they were all just standing around smoking.  We got out of there pretty fast.

            From there we met up with some of Daniel’s friends (Hernan and Segundo), who live in BsAs, and followed them to a most low key bar.  It has guitars along the walls, and anyone who wants to can just pick them up and play them.  A few of the people in our group took turns playing, and there were also other tables of performers.  One group did classic tango music- it was great!  They weren’t professionals or anything, just talented people with a passion for tango.  We stayed there until about 6:30 am, then came home and passed out J

            On Saturday, we went to a silly bar called the Alamo, which specializes in American music.  We stayed on the top level, but apparently on the first floor they also play American sports games and such on big TVs.  I wasn’t too sorry to have missed that.  After the Alamo, we went to Hernan’s sisters’ house to hang out and listen to some more guitar music.  It was a fun night with a true Argentine vibe.

First classes!

  I taught my first two classes on Thursday and Friday nights.  They both went pretty well, considering I had never taught anything before and was scared out of my mind!  Both classes were intermediate level, which is nice because they know enough to communicate well, but still have a lot of grammar and vocab to learn.  We talked about amusement parks on the first night, and train travel on the second.

I felt overwhelmed when we were first told we’d be teaching classes the first week, but classroom experience really is a great learning tool.  I’m already thinking about what I will do differently next time, and how I’ll have to go about teaching beginners and advanced students.  It’s a huge relief to be done with my first two classes!

Bienvenidos

Laziness and vanity have prompted me to start a blog.  It's easier for me than telling the same story a million times (I have tendinitis already guys!), and it's easier for YOU than listening to a bunch of stuff you already heard while I get around to the latest news.

That said, this first post will probably be a recap for most of you readers.  I really do spend most of my time in class, frantically trying to remember everything I'll need to be a real English teacher next month.  I've had a great time so far though, and it seems like there will be many more to come.

Getting down here was an adventure in itself.  Due to some stupidity on my part (and definitely also Delta Airlines'), I couldn't leave on Saturday like I was supposed to, and had to go home and drive back to Philly on Sunday.  There was a major lightning storm in Atlanta, but the delays weren't too bad, and I got to BsAs at about 8:30 am local time.  I made it to class only about half an hour late, so that wasn't bad.  There are 11 people in my class, and they're all pretty great.  We all went out to lunch on Monday at a pizza place around the corner.  Three of my classmates live in the residence with me (it's not just next door to EBC, it's the same building!), and most live in the area.

Jason lives in the San Telmo neighborhood, which is about 40 minutes away.  He's been great, but I don't see him that much, so I still have to figure a lot of things out about the city myself.  We're going skydiving, and maybe also to Iguazu Falls.  He's leaving at the beginning of August, so we'll have to hurry up and plan some of this stuff!