spanish class at La UBA

in the spring I took Level 5 Spanish at La Universidad de Buenos Aires, more commonly known as La UBA. Level 4 was nice because they had some classes at a branch office in Palermo, much closer to my neighborhood! For Level 5 I had to go all the way downtown to the Centro, the oldest part of the city, to take my class. This part of the University is located in a beautiful, decrepit old building which apparently was once a hotel! here's some not-very-descriptive pictures of the grand central staircase:

La UBA is free to residents of Argentina (not free for foreigners like me!!) and the state of disrepair of the buildings is honestly a little shocking. There are windows boarded over and parts of the building that are blocked off with piles of rubble! Also there is no toilet paper in the bathrooms, you have to bring your own. And sometimes it gets really hard to concentrate when it's 106 degrees and there's no air-conditioning in the cramped classrooms. Anyway, despite the physical appearance, I believe La UBA is academically the most well-respected university in the country? They say the professors aren't paid very well there, but it's an honor to work there, and it means that you are serious about your area of study, and allows you to be in contact with other leading minds. I've heard this from both my spanish teachers and a few Graphic Design professors that I've run into around town. It makes sense in that a university is supposed to be about ideas and community and academic experience, not flashy stupid expensive buildings. But sometimes it's a bummer when I have to pee after class and I forgot to bring my own toilet paper, again.

So anyway, level 5 was mostly Subjunctive. "No creo que vaya mañana" = "I don't think she's going tomorrow" ... or "Es insoportable que haya tanto ruido en la mañana!" = "It's unbearable the noise they make in the morning!" In English we don't really have a separate tense to express doubt/uncertainty/unlikeliness/possibility/opinion/etc but in Spanish we do, and it's called Subjunctive. We also learned how construct ideas such as "If I had a million dollars I would buy thousands of umbrellas" = "Si tuviera un palo verde, compraría miles de paraguas" and say things like "He told me that when you spoke last week you told him that you hated pizza so I didn't make you a pizza today" which is just a combination of estilo indirecto and a few different past tenses and subjunctives, and I've already forgotten how you're supposed to do that.

At a certain point we crossed into some territory that is, like, grammar that you need to know if you want to submit a formal academic paper and you live in Spain, but it's grammar that nobody on the street in Buenos Aires would ever use for any reason, and if you did they would probably laugh. So I feel like I might've reached the end of the line (for now, anyway) as far as my grammar studies. I still make a LOT of mistakes with past tenses and subjunctives and basically everything I've already learned - I definitely need lots of practice and review, I want to keep learning more vocabulary, but I don't think I will tackle any more advanced grammar for the time being. They do offer a spanish-language film appreciation course for advanced students of Spanish as a foreign language, and I'd like to take that one if I ever have time and money! For now my plan is to read novels in Spanish, listen to the radio in Spanish, turn on the TV news in Spanish, read the newspaper in Spanish, and go out and talk to Argentine friends in Spanish!

happy new year

Last night we went to our friend Jonathan's parents' house for Rosh Hashanah dinner. It was really huge and tasty and fun. We've had lots of wonderful family dinners with them in the past two years, but this time was the first time I felt like I could really understand most of the conversation, so it was even more fun. Except there was so much food that I was basically in a deep food coma for most of the night.
When the horseradish came out (to go with the gefilte fish) i said "como se llama? Rabino! rabino picante, mmm, me encanta!"(i thought i had said "what's the word for that? oh, horseradish! I love horseradish!") but everyone laughed and I didn't know why and they told me that I was saying "oh, spicy rabbi! I LOVE spicy rabbi!" because rabbi is rabino (rabino picante is spicy rabbi) and horseradish is rabano picante.

ha ha. spicy rabbi.

"sos extranjera?"

life has been totally totally nuts lately. the greatest point of craziness was saturday, when we were simultaneously moving into our awesome new apartment, WHILE cooking thanksgiving dinner for twenty people. we made a morning run together, carrying boxes from Diaz Velez to Ravignani. Then I started baking the pies while Mike and Jonathan made another trip to pick up more boxes and stuff. I was rummaging through boxes digging for spoons and saucepans while basting the roasting chickens and whipping mashed potatoes all at the same time. Anyway, dinner was really delicious and fun (lots of friends brought tasty dishes too!). It was great to have our house totally filled with food and wine and friends on our very first day. now i'm getting ready for my trip to the USA, i'm leaving in less than two weeks and I have SO much work to finish before I go.

today I called a flete service to arrange a truck to carry the last of our boxes and big stuff over to our new apartment. after talking to the guy on the phone for a minute, he asked, "sos extranjera?" = "are you a foreigner?" which made me smile and laugh because he had to ask me!! like, we actually had a conversation in spanish on the phone for a full minute before he realized that I'm not from here and I talk funny.

Phone calls have been the scariest thing for me here, it's so hard for me to have a conversation in spanish over the phone and I used to be way too terrified to make any phone calls, which made life really complicated and difficult. During my first year here, whenever I did make a phone call, it was just a lot of shouting "what?" "can you please repeat that?" and feeling impotent and frustrated and i'd hang up the phone having no idea what just happened. In person I can rely on body language to tell me a lot, even if I don't understand a single word. Anyway, now it's really gotten much easier and these days I feel brave and optimistic whenever I pick up the phone.

el medio es el mensaje?

hoy estaba pensando que todas cosas son por lo menos diez veces mas interesante en otra idioma. antes del año pasado, solamente tenia una idioma, y solamente podia pensar en una idioma. a veces pensé que mi vida faltaba algo, y sentia aburrido. ahora, asi que puedo pensar en otro idioma (mas o menos), si en algún momento pienso cosas aburrido, puedo cambiarme a pensar en español (o en castellano, como decimos aca en la Argentina), y los pensamientos mas aburridos se cambian a ser bastante mas interesante. Tengo que traducir todo en mi cabeza, y con este desafio, todo esta nuevo. Cuando voy a fiestas y trato de hablar con gente en castellano, hablo de cosas cotidianas y común, pero con un entusiasmo que viene del desafio de traducir. Hablo del colectivos, o de mi casa, o cualquier tontería, con vocabulario de Spanish Level One, y siento muy orgulloso que por lo menos, puedo hablar. Puede ser que en el futuro, si aprendo a hablar mucho mejor, quizas la idioma perdería su misterio y excitación, y sería común. Pero todavia no estoy allá.