A day in Uruguay

On Saturday May 26, I took a boat over to Colonia, Uruguay! This adorable little town is about 3 hours across the Rio de la Plata by boat from Buenos Aires. It is the oldest town in Uruguay, founded by the Portuguese in 1680. It changed hands several times during the colonial era between the Spanish and the Portuguese, and the town shows a lot of influence from both countries. The town's full name is Colonia del Sacramento and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Colonia is home to about 20,000 - a nice escape from the 13 million living in Buenos Aires. A lot of porteños (people who live in Buenos Aires) spend their weekends and holidays in this quiet Uruguayan town.

I went with Michelle (a friend from my class) on a 9am boat across the river. This boat is no typical ferry - it had a live band, a cafe/bar and a tax-free shop inside. It also had an upper deck where could check out the view of the coast of Buenos Aires, and catch the first glimpse of Uruguay.

First and Second floors of the ferry

Me and a map of Uruguay (pointing to Colonia) in the tourist center

I found that it was easy to fall in love with this quaint little town - winding cobblestone streets, colonial style houses, sunsets on the riverbank - it's really quite charming . No loud busses passing you by, no hurried businessmen rushing past you, no dog poop on the sidewalk - it was really quite a nice change from Buenos Aires...

Typical Street in Colonia

I feel like it's important to note here that although Colonia is a lot calmer than Buenos Aires, it's not boring in any way. There are 7 historical museums, a lighthouse, Iglesia Matriz (Uruguay's oldest church), old Jesuit mission ruins, a yacht harbor, the old city wall and gate and plenty of artisan shops to keep you busy.

Me on this giant wooden swirl at the habor

Me in front of the lighthouse and Jesuit ruins

If all that's not enough, take a break by the riverside and have some lunch, and chances are, a lively Candombe band playing traditional Uruguayan music will pass you by...

Michelle and I having lunch by the river

Traditional Candombe musicians passing down the street

The most well -visited street in Colonia is called Calle de los Suspiros, or the Street of Whispers. It is one of the oldest streets in the city and still maintains a very colonial-era feel. Walking down this 'magical' street is like taking a trip back in time, escaping reality for a few moments and experiencing life from colonial times. It is so well-preserved and you can walk through one of the home and see it perfectly in tact from when the city was first established. You have to watch your step though on these cobblestones, I don't think they really have been refitted into since the colonial times either...

Michelle and I on Calle de los Suspiros

Typical house on Calle de los Suspiros

After just one day, it's easy to see why Uruguay is considered the 'undiscovered gem of South America'. Here's a picture I took just before we left Colonia to prove it - the sunset over the Rio de la Plata...

A tour of Buenos Aires!

Finally some free time! This weekend, I was a major tourist and tried to get in all of the tourist sights that I could, since I have no time during the week to see anything. Buenos Aires is divided into barrios. On Saturday I visited the barrios of Palermo and Recoleta. Palermo is a much quieter area of the city, where there are many parks and you can ride horse-drawn carriage down the street. One of the parks that I walked through is a giant rose garden. There were only a few roses that we actually in bloom, but the layout if beautiful, and the lake within the garden is very peaceful. It's all very romantic really, given you were there with the right person, I suppose.

El Rosedal - Rose garden in Palermo

Me in the Rose garden

You can rent paddle boats!

Me in the walkway along the lake

After this I visited a botanical garden, where all of the flowers and trees were all identified with signs. There were plants from all over the world! I found it alittle hilarious that the only thing I could find from the U.S. was a sequoia tree, and it was kind of falling down...

Sequoia - this is how it really is standing!

Pond with fish in it as you enter the garden

After another garden, I decided it was time to do something more intellectual. Down the street there was a museum of the life of Eva Peron (known by most Americans as Madonna's character in the movie Evita) The museum was in an old colonial house, where each room showed a different stage of her life. They had old pictures of her family, quotes from her autobiography written largely on the walls, and dresses she wore at many of famous events.

After the museum I took a bus to the ritzy barrio called Recoleta. This is where are the upscale apartments, clothing stores and restaurants are. I intended to go there to visit the cemetary, which although it may sound kind of morbid, is apparently a big tourist attraction - especially the tomb of the aforementioned Evita. However, being several blocks long, I couldn't quite find the entrance...however, I DID find a huge outdoor market - rows and rows of stands selling all kinds of things: artwork, handmade scarves, picture frames, clothes, etc. Shopping was not exactly on my itinerary for the day, but I welcomed the opportunity to walk through, talk with the locals, and buy just a few souvenirs.

Paseo Recoleta - aka a shopping extravaganza!

After a bit of shopping, I headed down the street to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Museum of Fine Arts). They have a great collection of Spanish artists, like Goya, Velasquez, and Miro, along with many paintings done by Argentine artists. There were also a few scultpures by Rodin (who's museum I visited in Paris) and a few somewhat random vases from the Ming Dynasty. My favorite part was an exhibit of 18th century tablets painted with scenes from the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

By this time it was getting dark and I knew I had another big day ahead of me, so I headed back home in time for a dinner of homeade pizza. I hadn't eaten pizza in so long, but my host mom barely used any tomato sauce (she doesn't like it either), and turns out, it was delicious.

On Sunday, I needed to take a new bus, so I headed towards a new bus stop about 5 blocks from my house. Here's where my bus stop was:

Right in front of the Argentine Congress building! I had no idea is was so close to my house. I got on my bus and headed to La Boca, by far the most colorful and lively barrio in Buenos Aires.

It's main street is called Caminito, and it's full of artisans selling their goods, locals dancing tango, typical Italian cantinas, artists displaying their work, and tourists eagerly soaking it all in.

I found one artist's work particularly intriguing. His name is Carlos Sosa, a native to La Boca, he's been painting scenes of his neighborhood for over 20 years - without his hands. This man had deformed hands since birth, but took a liking for painting as a child and began using a paintbrush in his mouth to produce his art. He has been nationaly recognized in Argentina for his work, yet still continues to sell most of his paintings on the streets of La Boca, just a few meters from his home. I loved talking to this cheerful man and watching him skillfully depict his neighborhood in his work. After I bought his painting, he gladly signed it and dedicated it to me.

me and Carlos

writing my name on the painting!

After leaving my new friend and wandering these lively streets a bit more, I headed to the barrio of San Telmo. This picturesque part of the city is full of colonial style buildings and cobblestone streets, lined with cute cafes and small boutiques. On Sunday, the main plaza, Plaza Dorrego, fills with a huge antiques fair, leaving room in the center for a tango show (of course). I didn't know this when I started off walking around this area, but one of the streets is blocked off for about 10-15 blocks for street vendors to sell their handicrafts, food, or other goods.

After walking down various blocks from of stands (and getting by with only buying a scarf, which was more of a necessity than a luxury), I unknowingly arrived at my next stop: Plaza de Mayo. This is Buenos Aires' main plaza and is where many of Argentina's most important historical events took place. For example, Evita and her husband President Peron gave speeches from the balcony of the Casa Rosada, the main government building.

Plaza de Mayo

Casa Rosada - workplace of the Argentine President

Plaza de Mayo is most famous for the protests of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, women who came in white headscarves protesting the Argentine Dirty War during the 1970's and looking for information about their disappeared loved ones.
Also along the plaza is the main Catedral (cathedral). Inside is the tomb of Jose de San Martin, liberator of Argentina and many other countries in South America. It's guarded by 2 Argentine military officers, and I had the priviledge of witnessing a changing of the guard ceremony when I was there.

Tomb of Jose de San Martin, liberator of Argentina

As the sun was setting, I headed to my last site of the day: El Obelisco, the obelisk. Located in Plaza de la Republica, this giant obelisk was build to commemorate the 400 year anniversary of the city in 1936. It is 220 feet tall and located in the center of Avenida 9 de Julio - the widest avenue in the world. Picture (from the internet) of Avenida 9 de Julio at night - I pass this street every day!

Me at the obelisco at sunset - a guy laid on the ground in the plaza to take this picture for me!

So, that's the two-day tour of Buenos Aires! There still is a lot to see, but that's all I could get in this weekend. I leave you with a picture of a typical street in downtown BsAs, which reminded me of the true season in of the city right now: Fall!

First day of Teaching!

They don´t give you much time in my class here before they throw you into the deep end and see if you can swim. For example: Day 1-Introduction to teaching English, Day 2- Observation of experienced teacher, Day 3- First day of Teaching! Really that is just a very general outline of our days. During the morning hours (9am-2pm), we work on lesson plans and have ´input sessions´, where the our teacher here teaches us about teaching (did you catch all that?). Then we have lunch from 2-3, then teaching an English class from 3-5pm, & feedback for the lessons from 5-6:15pm. Then I stay and work on my lesson, write emails, or record my life here on this blog until 8, home by 9pm for dinner, more TEFL work until midnight, and finally bed! I realized today that I am gone from my house for about 12 hours each day, it´s kind of intense! Luckily we have a sweet balcony off of our classroom, so I can at least get some fresh (yet chilly) air in between sessions.

For our first day of teaching, we divided up the lesson on the HOME into 4 different sections: Lexis (vocab), Grammar, Listening, and Pronunciation. We each had 30 minutes to teach our section, and mine was pronunciation. I taught on sentence stress - for example, ´WHERE´S the BATHROOM?´ instead of ´where´s THE bathroom?´ (hopefully you can hear the difference...). I also had to teach the vowel sound in the word ¨where¨and ¨stair¨. Pronunciation is one of the most difficult things to teach spanish speakers, especially vowels because there are only 9 vowel sounds in spanish and over 20 in English. The last thing I taught on was the two different ways to pronounce ¨th¨, called voiced and unvoiced. For example, the ¨th¨in the words thy and thigh are pronounced differently. This was also a challenge, because neither of those sounds exist in spanish.

Anyway, enough teacher stuff, overall the lesson went really well. We had 4 adult students yesterday. It is a beginner class, but their levels of competency varied. Our class is just offered as a free English class, so anyone can come and we never really know how many students we will have because its not something that they need to sign up for or anything. We teach Monday -Thursday, alternating 2 students teaching a day. Next week we will continue with the beginner class, then the last two weeks of the course we will teach an advanced group of students. I love that there are only 4 of us ´student teachers´ because we get more classroom time and feedback. This class is a lot of work - lesson planning, grammar/phonology exercises, individual study - but I know all of it will come together to make me a great English teacher!

Photos of my life!

My homestay!!! (no photos of my bedroom yet, still getting moved in...)

<-- Kitchen in my apartment, with pantry/laundry through the door

<--Living room, where my host mom has her psych patients and we have a lovely balcony with a bunch of plants.

Below is the view from our apartment´s balcony, we are indeed right in the heart of this big city.

Although we live near the downtown area, I have yet to really see the centro. Just not enough time during the day I guess. I have planned for this weekend though to explore this wonderful city that will be my home for the next month.

Pictures of our Bridge-Linguatec Program office

Above: Main hall and computer area

<--: Classroom for the 4 of us TEFL students

Below: view from the 4th floor balcony outside our classroom

I spend so much time here, about 9am to 8pm everyday, so at least we have a nice view! Chaou for now!

Facts and Class

As promised, a few facts about Argentina(for those of you wondering where in the world I am...) :
~Argentina has a population of 32.6 million people, about 1/3 of which live in Buenos Aires or the surrounding area.
~99% of the Argentinian people are of European descent (predominantly Spanish and Italian) with less than 1% being of African descent and less than 1% being indigenous.
~In terms of land mass, Argentina is the 2nd largest country in South America (after Brazil) and 8th largest country in the world.

~Argentina is home to the highest peak in South America, Mount Aconcagua, at nearly 23,000 feet.
(picture from wikipedia.com)
~Argentina is also home to the world´s largest glacier, called Glaciar Perito Moreno. This 250 km² ice formation is also the 3rd largest fresh water reserve in the world.
~Argentina also boast the southern most city in the world, Ushuaia, capital of the Argentinian province of Tierra del Fuego.

Ok enough about the country, on to MY life here in Argentina. Today was the second day of my TEFL course. Yesterday I arrived at the office building where the course is taught. We have a very nice section here with 2 classrooms, offices, and computers with internet (where I am writing from right now). It turns out that there are only 4 students in my class - Kelly from Texas, Michelle from Colorado, Graham from England, and me. It´s nice because our classroom setting is very intimate and informal. Our teacher Mali is from South Africa (he´s white) so he teaches in a British accent, which at times can be quite amusing.

Yesterday, after a brief introduction to the class, Mali left the room and came back speaking only in Czech. At first we thought it was a joke, but then realized that he was going to teach us very basic words and phrases in Czech. After an hour of this, and my basic learning being ¨Ahoj!¨(hello) and ¨Pa pa!¨ (bye bye!) He left and came back in and asked us (in English) what the point of all that was. Very quickly I realized that he wanted us to understand how our students would be feeling, those who don´t know any English at all. See, when we teach here, we are not allowed to use any spanish (despite any knowledge we might have). It seems to create a handicap for both the teacher and learner to just fall back on the native language.

After the morning session, the other students and I went to a nearby plaza to eat lunch. Our class building is in a very nice area of BsAs (Buenos Aires), meaning everything is very expensive. So we walked a bit and found a delightful cafe to eat toasted ham & cheese sandwiches at, as it had gotten sunnier and warmer by lunchtime.

In the afternoon, we did several different activities, one of my favorites being correcting mistakes of other students. I realized that teaching a foreign language really can be quite enjoyable when I came upon the following errors:
1. ¨I am going to bring my sleepy sack.¨ (instead of ¨sleeping bag¨, how cute!)
2. ¨Let´s keep touching!¨ (did you figure out what the student meant? ¨Let´s keep in touch!¨) Learning English can be rather tricky, and hilarious, at times...

For dinner, my host mother made sopa de calabaza (pumpkin soup) & milanesa (flat, breaded beef steak - remined me of country fried steak at Saga only waaaay better). My host mom has 2 twin 28-year-old daughters, who came for dinner and we talked a lot about Spain because they have traveled there as well. After dinner I needed to prepare my first lesson - no worries though, I just had to present a 10- minute ¨how to...¨ lesson to the other kids in my class. I chose how to read music. :)

Today at school, we learned more about teaching from Mali & taught our How-to lessons in the morning. During the lunch hour, Michelle and I went on an adventure to find the bank, although we didn´t know it would be when we left. We figured in this nice part of BsAs, there would be a bank on just about every corner, but after walking several blocks, we decided to ask someone. They told us 300 meters to the next bank. We walked 500 meters and asked someone else. They also told us 300 meters (from where we were). Another 500 meters down the road we found it. I needed to change my 100 peso and 50 peso bills because no one will accept them for purchases less than 90 pesos and 40 pesos, respectively. (Side note: $1 = 3 Argentinian pesos) Basically they are not real big on giving change here. My friend even tried to change a 2 peso bill for change for the bus at a little food stand and they wouldn´t do it. I am learning quickly that coins are precious here because they are the only way you can ride the bus (there is an automatic machine you pay into when you get on). Rushing to get back to class on time, we stopped at the cafeteria of the local Catholic University we passed on the way. Very cheap, very likely we will return there again...

After lunch we got to meet our new students! 7 Argentinians came for our first English class, although we didn´t teach, we just observed, but it was still exciting! Before class started we went around and individually met them. This is meant to be a beginner level class, but people are at various levels of beginner. For example, some can talk all about their families, where they live, etc., while other´s struggle to tell me how old they are. It was good to see and get to meet the kind of people we will be teaching for the next 2 weeks, before we move on to the advanced levels. Tomorrow I am in charge of teaching pronounciation: the 2 different ¨th¨ sounds (as in thy and thigh) and the ae sound (as in ¨stair¨). I´m excited, but I have alot of work to do to prepare my lesson. Adios!

Welcome to Buenos Aires, Argentina!

From May 13-June 9, 2007, I will be enjoying the porteño life in Buenos Aires, Argentina. During this time, I will be taking a TEFL course - basically learning to Teach English as a Foreign Language. This will make me qualified to teach English anywhere where English is not the primary language. I imagine I will also have a number of exciting adventures here in the bottom half of the globe, so read on!

I left my home at noon on May 12, left Chicago at 2pm, arrived in Houston at around 4, where I waited around until 9pm for what would become my longest flight to this date - 10 1/2 hours! I arrived in Buenos Aires(written as BsAs) at 9:30am and easily found my luggage and pre-arranged transport to my host family. Buenos Aires is a huge city- in fact, 1/3 of Argentina´s population lives in Buenos Aires and the surrounding area. More exciting facts about Argentina and BsAs from my guidebook to come...

Here I am living with a hostmom who has 3 children, all grown up and moved out. Our apartment building has a security guard outside the door (for all of you worried about my safety here in Latin America) and luckily, an elevator to take me to my 12th floor apartment. Rita, my host mom, is a delightful woman who is thrilled to have 1. a female student and 2. a student who speaks English. She told me the last two students she had stay with her were guys who barely said ¨hola¨and ¨sí¨to her. She´s a good cook from what I can tell so far - for lunch on Sunday we had spagetti (I told her about how I don´t eat sauce and she was ok with that). They eat a lot of pasta down here because of the strong Italian influence. She also made empanadas for dinner, this after seeing me drool over an empanada restaurant near our house. My host mom is a psychologist and actually sees patients in our living room during the day. We also have 3 bedrooms, a kitchen, 2 bathrooms, a patio that overlooks the city. It´s really nice here, and the city reminds me alot of Chicago. Although it is a bit chilly here for me. Here it gets up to about 60 degrees during the day - not the lovely summer weather you might except in Latin America. But I´m pushing through... with a sweater, a fleece, and a coat on. The wind from the river in the downtown area by my school makes it worse, but in the sun it´s alright.

Classes started today, and I have my first assignment I have to work on! Chaou!