First, some pictures!:
This is a picture of Susana's house: it's super-nice!
Masses at the market of crafts and antiques.
Una iglesia: a church.
Finally, a random picture I like. The market here, although it's out of focus, is one I want to check out!
Today was my first day of orientation classes at the University of Palermo. We'll have orientation all week: our Knox professors will help us get basic things we need sorted out (cell phones, ID's, etc.), and the Argentine professors of the classes we can choose from will give us little overviews of our choices.
One of the things our Knox professors helped us with was filling out forms. We all went over what each word meant and filled the forms for our ID's out step by step. It took us about 20 minutes! It sucks to be confronted with these gaps in comprehension after studying a language for seven years... But these are words and cultural things that we haven't encountered before, and few of us have had much practice speaking. So, it's all for the best. Susana said that we ought to learn languages the way children do-- by listening, speaking, making embarrassing mistakes, and learning from practice and corrections. She's really nice and will definitely help me learn. =)
El Día del Niño was fun, but I was so exhausted from all the traveling and touring, and overwhelmed by my shaky comprehension. I met some more of the family: Ale(jandra) and her husband, their two children: Juli(eta) and Joaquín, their neice Mikaela, another guy, and the two students who live here: Santi(ago) and a girl my age who studies medicine (I'll add her name when I remember!). Everyone greets each other with an "hola" and an air-kiss on the cheek.
Dinner was great. We had fresh pasta with meat sauce. The kids got presents for Children's Day, and the adults spent a while trying to figure out the magic tricks from a present one of them got. It was called "trujos de magia"-- "magic tricks," but when it turned out to be impossibly complicated, one of the guys called them "truchos de magia"-- "magic rip-offs." =)
With all those people talking to each other, I understood very little. I think the hardest part was trying to follow all the topic-switching. If I'm sure about what the topic is, vocabulary gaps are easier to manage. It was frustrating! But I do alright talking to one person at a time, and Susana assured me that after a month I'll improve a lot.
It's been overwhelming so far, but I'm having a really great time. The city is beautiful, friendly, and delicious! =)
Hasta luego!
Kaeli
Kaeli
No comments:
Post a Comment