Yupperz, Carolyn's abroad again! This time in Argentina, to teach English.
Wow, I can’t believe I’ve been in Argentina for over a month now! It’s definitely time to update the rest of the world on my recent adventures, i.e., starting this blog is long overdue.
Well, I arrived in Buenos Aires on July 1. I immediately fell in love with my host family. I was living with a woman, Ana, and her husband Osvaldo. They are super nice, and our dinners always turn into heated discussions about culture, politics, drugs, world issues, and the like. It makes for fantastic Spanish practice!
On July 2 I jumped right into my TEFL certification course at the school Bridge. Right away I made friends with my classmates, which was awesome. The course overall was really fantastic. I was kind of afraid I wouldn't like teaching or that I wouldn't be good at it, but neither proved to be true :) I really like the methodology we were being taught. It’s a communicative approach, and the idea is that you never (or, if you’re bilingual, very rarely) use the learner’s first language in the classroom—you speak English only. So, in theory, because I’ve taken this course I could go anywhere in the world in teach. I feel like if I had learned Spanish that way, I would have gotten a lot stronger a lot faster… Anyway, throughout the course we had to do practice teaching, and we gave lessons to a beginning and an advanced group of students that came to Bridge Monday-Thursday afternoons. That was fun, and I got to know some of the students pretty well. On days when we didn’t teach, we observed each other teaching—which was also a good learning experience.
After my first week in Buenos Aires, a class from Northeastern University (based in Boston) came to take Spanish lessons at Bridge, so we had to share the building. Two girls also stayed with me and my host family. Their names were Andrea and Eugenia, and they were super cool! We became good pals and got into a few adventures together (including seeing the new Superman and Batman movies—which are both FANTASTIC, by the way!!!). I tagged along with their group on two excursions, one to an estancia (traditional gaucho ranch), and another to Tigre, a village outside Buenos Aires famous for its rivers.
Eugenia’s first time on a horse…
View of Tigre from our boat ride
Eugenia, Andrea, and I
also went to see a tango show together.
The tango was fantastic—as was the dessert.
I really enjoyed my host
family--it was probably my favorite part of living in BA. There was really good chemistry
between all of us. Plus, Ana’s relatives
were always over—sometimes we had dinner with her children and
grandchildren! It was super fun. I prepared my famous Bananas Foster for
dessert one night and taught Ana (then later that week she made it for us! Such
a great student!). Andrea and Eugenia
prepared French Toast and scrambled eggs so we had an American breakfast for
dinner one night (we coined the term “desacena”;
desayuno means breakfast and cena means dinner). And Eugenia (who is Greek) prepared a Greek lemon
cake for us one day as well. If we weren’t
cooking, we were enjoying Ana’s amazing cooking (best pizza and panqueques de verduras I’ve ever
had!). Needless to say, the kitchen was
always a happy place in that household!
Ana making Bananas Foster for the fam!
Eugenia, Ana, myself, and Andrea. Notice Eugenia’s and Ana’s ponchos—Eugenia
bought hers at the estancia and we
found the red one in a market to give to Ana as a gift!
Here are some more
pictures of Buenos Aires:
Me in front of Casa Rosada (the pink Argentine version of the White
House)
Plaza de Mayo
Inside the Catedral
Me with Don Julio inside our TEFL classroom (Don Julio is a toy dog. We
adopted him as our class mascot.)
Buenos Aires is
absolutely HUGE—it’s divided into a bunch of different neighborhoods (or barrios), but each
could easily function as its own city.
Bridge was located in the Microcentro, and Ana’s house was southwest in
the barrio of Boedo. In morning weekday traffic, by bus, it was a
1hr 15 minutes commute—golly geez! (Note
that later at night with no traffic, I once made the trip in 25 minutes.)
I, being the running
enthusiast that I am, quickly scouted out the best places to run in BA. My favorite was la Reserva Ecológica Costanera
Sur. This is a huge park behind Puerto
Madero, right along the water, about 3-4 miles around. Running through there, it’s like you’re not
in the big city (except for the skyline off in the distance). I did a couple long runs (7-8mi) through
there. I also once ran through el Parque
3 de Febrero located in the barrio Palermo.
And a mile away from Ana’s house was el Parque Chacabuco—complete with
gravel running track and central water fountain.
I did enjoy living in
BA for a month, but… that was enough. I
was starting to feel very congested. So
where did I go… Patagonia!
I’m currently residing
in Bariloche (formally known as San Carlos de Bariloche) in the province of Río
Negro, which is in the northern part of Argentine Patagonia. This new environment instantly made me feel
more refreshed. So now I’m just looking
for work…
…more on Bariloche to
come!
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