Spanish Classes

One of the things that we wanted to do with our time in Buenos Aires was improve our Spanish. There are lots of schools that teach Spanish, and a few of them are listed in our trusty Lonely Planet guidebook. One of the schools they listed is in San Telmo, a few blocks from our apartment. Their website said that they offered classes to all levels, with a choice of how many hours per week. You could either take classes for two hours a day or four hours a day, with five students in the class being the maximum. We walked over to the school, located on Chacabuco Avenue, and rang the buzzer. There was no sign indicating that this was a school; it was just like all the other apartment buildings. An old building, probably from the mid-1800s, with a ten-foot wrought iron door. A voice came through the electric answerer, and we explained that we were here to find out about classes. Soon, Alejandro appeared at the door, explained that yes, in fact this was the school, he was the director, and could we come back later because he was ocupadisimo right now. (extremely busy) It turned out that he was in the middle of a class. We were expecting a receptionist or somebody, but this is a very small operation. We came back in a couple hours, and sat and talked with Alejandro, and Monica signed up for classes to start next week. You can sign up for one week at a time. I told him that I was also interested, but in a more advanced class, and Ale told me that perhaps the week after, there might be one for me.

Monica started her class, along with two young guys from England and another from Austria. Students from the USA are rare. Usually the students are from Europe or from Brazil. The two English guys, Nick and Alex, are in their mid-twenties, and they are in Buenos Aires to learn the tango. They go to milongas (tango clubs) every night, and they take lessons also. Tango is intimidating, especially for guys who are learning it, because it is a very male oriented dance. The man is in charge. he always leads, and the woman always follows. Nick and Alex have to get very confident in their skills before they ask a woman to dance. She doesn’t want to dance with somebody less skillful than she is.

Learning a language takes a lot of time. It’s not a consistently upward learning curve. There are times when you learn, but then you forget what you learn. There are periods of plateaus when you think you are not progressing. There are backward slips when you know what you should say, but you say it wrong. It can be frustrating, you have to be patient, and you also have to be comfortable with abiguity. We won’t understand everything, and we won’t always be able to express exactly what we want. Nevertheless, our Spanish is improving, mostly through practice. The classes teach and solidify, but you have to use what you learn in class outside of class. If you don’t practice, you don’t improve.

Monica is speaking in the past tense now. It is really fun to listen to her and to hear her improvements. This week, they are concentrating on the past tense in class. Here is Mon, standing in front of the board that says, “What did you do this weekend?” Weekend is translated as “fin de semana,” but everybody just shortens it to “finde.” It sounds great.The classrooms are really small, with one whiteboard. We sit around a table, with coffee or water or pastries, and talk it over. Our classes are two hours each day. Mike’s class is from 10:00 until noon, and Mon’s is from 12:15 until 2:15. Nick is the blond guy from England, and Lautauro is there in the school to help out with whatever we need. They are both pretty tall. Nancy is a portena (born in Buenos Aires) and she loves languages and grammar. She teaches Castellano (Spanish) here in our school (Escuela Rayuela. This means “Hopscotch.” It’s a title of a book written by Julio Cortazar, one of Alejandro’s literary heroes.) and at another school. She’s cheerful and very clear in her explanations. Both of us love her classes. Mike started classes a week after Moni. His classes had one other student, a girl from Sao Paolo Brazil named Natalya. Natalya is here in Buenos Aires to study Marketing, and she hopes to stay here. After a week, Natalya left, and now I am taking individual classes, just me and Nancy. It is great. It’s thrilling (really) to be able to speak, using complex grammar, and have someone to explain your mistakes and help you. It’s thrilling to be able to say, “We went to a tango show because we didn’t want to get back to the USA and realize that we had been in Buenos Aires for two months without going to at least one.” In Spanish.  Here, Natalya is in the middle, after her final class.We each have one more week of class. Hopefully, we’ll learn some new grammar, and more importantly, hopefully we’ll remember how to use it.