I´m desiring to catch up to present time, and also to not write so much. I like preserving my memories in writing, and I do want to share my experiences with people, but I feel like I´m spending too much time in front of the computer. So I´m going to do my best to summarize the rest of the ¨work¨ week here.
On Wednesday, I still felt distracted and brought down by a situation still needing to be dealt with back at home. When I left the apartment, I was surprised to see that it was raining. It actually felt kind of nice and refreshing. And as I walked to Plaza Italia, my subway station, I considered that rather than resisting all the Portuguese being spoken in class, perhaps I should just ask the Brazilians to teach me some. Why fight it? But that day in Spanish class, I realized that the bigger problem was when they were speaking Spanish. So much of the class time was taken up with my classmates speaking Spanish, and I didn´t understand how it could be the right class for me. Sure, I could have repeatedly asked for repetition and translation, but I felt I´d get in the way of the 6 other students getting to practice their Spanish. I found myself wanting to leave. Instead of leaving to talk to the director of the school to see if I should be moved to another class, I remained in class, but stopped being present; I journaled instead, like a rebellious adolescent rather than like the mature young woman I am! ;) And again, I spoke with the teacher, but she didn´t seem to think I needed to move to another class if the lessons were going well. I didn´t really explain though that I didn´t feel like I was learning much.
The next day though, Thursday, I did go to the director of the school, and I explained the entire situation, and mentioned that I was feeling frustrated. I also got teary eyed and choked up and apologized for being emotional. She said something like, ¨No Rebecca. Don´t be sorry. Emotional and sensitive is one thing. It means you´re alive. But frustrated? I don´t want to see you frustrated.¨ She put me in another class. The same level class, just a different one. She and an office worker also told me that this is a common issue with having a lot of Brazilians in one class.
My new teacher, Lucia, was very sweet, and a very good teacher. Really, very good. She and I both wished I´d been moved to her class earlier. I started learning more in that first day, than I had learned the previous days. I discovered that there were some things I should have learned in that level class, but maybe all the conversation time had taken away from it. I don´t know. Didn´t matter anymore. I was in the ¨right¨ class now, with students who had a similar level of speaking ability. I felt more comfortable and like my learning needs were finally being met. I did miss the Brazilians a bit, on a personal level, but this was better for me in terms of actually learning Spanish.
As for Tango, Gustavo arrived late each day. Not much by Friday, but Wednesday, he was 30 minutes late. Given my negativity that Wednesday though, I was not feeling particularly patient at first. But soon I realized it was ridiculous for me to be sitting around thinking about how I would have had time for some more yoga or qigong if I had stayed home an extra 30 minutes-- I had that time now. I could choose to view it as a gift! So what if it meant 30 minutes less of Tango? So instead of just sitting around waiting, I practiced qigong and did some stretching on the dance floor. ¨Don´t just wait. Meditate!¨ That´s my new mantra. Thanks to something I once read in an Osho book, I´d been following through on that the majority of the past year or two, but this week I forgot. So maybe this little rhyme will help me remember!
Throughout the week, I continued improving even more with Tango. Worked a lot on resistance, ¨energy,¨ and finding my center. And feeling the connection with the lead. Although each day I felt some frustration with Gustavo´s teaching methods and/or not understanding him, I had some fun in class this week and actually really enjoyed dancing with him. I even laughed! I really miss going out dancing though. Haven´t had the time or energy yet here, but I will go soon....
I also got to know my classmates better. I really resonated with Camila and could see us becoming friends. She and Cecilia invited me out for lunch on Wednesday. On the way to an awful buffet from which I´m still recovering, we ran into another Brazilian who invited us out to dance that night and told me that I can sleep when I die. Camila and I talked about taking a boat to Colonia or Montevideo in Uruguay, but just for the weekend, as she has more classes next week. Even though I was really craving a day of rest this weekend, and even though I wanted to go for longer, and go to Punta del Este for some beach time, I figured it would be worth it to go for the weekend now too, even if just for the experience and fun of a weekend trip with Camila! And my next post or two will include more on how this all played out...
More cold showers all week long! By Friday, I was loving it though. It actually felt so good that I didn´t want it to end and I was laughing in the shower at how funny this whole situation was, and how funny all of the week´s challenges had been.
Speaking of the week´s challenges, the funniest was Thursday night. On Wednesday, I had called a massage therapist that Ingrid had recommended. She would come to the apartment Thursday night at 7:30. At about 7:10, I decide to use an adaptor I found at Ingrid´s to charge my iPod with a charger I brought. I thought the charger was dual voltage, so I wouldn´t need any sort of transformer. I plugged it in to an outlet in the bedroom, and I heard a loud noise. That noise was actually the silence created by the electricity going out! (The computer had been on, and it´s quite loud.)
My eyes widened, my jaw dropped. ¨Oh crap!¨ And I laughed. A lot. At myself and the whole situation. Of course this would happen right before the massage. Of course. No lights. No music. No air conditioning. And what if this had affected the whole building? I didn´t know! I was only half-dressed, so I threw on some clothes and my sandals and ran three flights of stairs to find a portero. The man at the desk was one I had not met. I took a moment to introduce myself and ask him his name, but now I don´t remember it. I used a combination of Spanish and sign language or charades to explain what had happened. I even tried to explain that my massage therapist would be arriving soon! He told me not to worry and that he needed to call another portero to watch the doors while he came up to the apartment. He told me to go back to the apartment, and he´d be there soon. I took a moment to recognize how much better I could speak and understand Spanish after only a few days.
And then ran back up the stairs. I heard him come up a few minutes later, and remembered that there´s no number on the door, so he might not know which one to come to! I went out in the hall to find him. He came in and we searched EVERYWHERE for the electric panel. We looked behind furniture and mirrors. Couldn´t find it. He told me he would go down to the basement to see if he could fix it from there. Right after he left, I looked behind a photo that was hanging on the wall in the hallway, one of the few things we hadn´t looked behind, and it was there. So I ran downstairs to find him. My massage therapist had just arrived. Sandra. Very lovely woman, and a phenomenal masseuse! She and the portero came back upstairs with me. He flipped a switch, and voila! We had light! And air coniditioning. And music! And it was good.
Ok, one more little story of my adventures to finish up this blog and be done with writing about Week 1!
On Friday, my teacher wrote out how I could ask for the USB cable I need for my camera. I lost it a couple of months ago, and made the mistake of thinking it would be easy to find one here! After class, and after a very long walk with my classmates and teacher, I returned to the school to meet Camila. We were planning to find a travel agency to look into a weekend trip. We ended up walking around with some other Brazilians, two of which had been in my other class. One of which was another Camila. She taught me some Portuguese as we walked. I started to realize that walking with a group meant stopping and waiting for others to do things that they wanted to do along the way. I was eager to get home. So Camila said she´d email me about Uruguay, no problem.
When I left the group, I suddenly felt free. I didn´t even realize that I hadn´t felt that way before. But now it was official. I was done with COINED. Woo hoo! No more feeling like I´m in on a conveyor belt, which was one of the images/feelings that contributed to me dropping out of law school years ago, but that´s a whole other story! Back to Buenos Aires: I saw a camera store on my way to the subway. I stopped outside and rifled through my bags, looking for what my teacher had written. I couldn´t find it. I walked in anyway and asked if anyone spoke English. The middle aged man behind the counter did. I explained what I´d been looking for. He said it was ok, to just speak in English. But I wanted to learn Spanish, so I´d ask him how to say everything in Spanish. It got to the point where he wouldn´t even answer my question until I had correctly repeated what he´d told me to say in Spanish. I liked it. I liked him. And we and some other employees there were all laughing quite a bit.
He high-fived me at the end of it all and I told him he was a muy bueno professor. This is the way to learn Spanish. Going out and interacting with others. And it certainly helps when the other knows English. But even when they don´t, it´s still a great way to learn. Although I didn´t get my cable there, I did get a nice dose of laughter and left feeling great, ending a somewhat rough and super long week on a very positive note.
© 2011 Rebecca Clio Gould. All rights reserved.
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