Buenos Aires

One day, the clouds just opened up…

April 24, 2010

… and poured full sentences of Castellano out of my mouth!  Full sentences!  Out of MY mouth! Like mute babies who all of a sudden start talking out of the blue, I started pulling words out of the air to build sensical phrases on the spot. Like a storm, it all just came raining down. […]






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Riki, Shakira and the women of Sex and the City

April 21, 2010

After writing about my demoralizing weekend of not being able to communicate with the boy’s family, I’ve received lots of great advice on how I can speed up my uptake of Castellano.  Everything from more dinners out (great!), more local TV watching and tandem language partnering! I’ve decided that I’m going to look for the Spanish […]






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Crashing back down to earth

April 19, 2010

We spent the weekend in Mar del Plata to visit the boy’s family.  We had home-cooked food, spent time by the sea and generally relaxed for three days.  But my oh my, what three days of pure frustration they were for me. After 8 classes of Español para Extranjeros, I was feeling fantastic leaving Buenos […]






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The beauty of language learning

April 11, 2010

Learning a new language is like stumbling through darkness to a destination not yet charted.  I know I’m going to get there at some point but where and how I’ll know, I have no idea.  Learning Spanish has been like a shot in the dark.  There’s a goal but I’m not quite sure exactly when […]






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To market

April 9, 2010

Life is good.  Seriously.  To wake up in the morning and worry about nothing more than buying ingredients for the day’s lunch is just … heaven.  And no, I didn’t win the lottery, nor did I strike it rich with stock, and no I don’t come from old money.  A few months of simple, care […]






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Spanish: lesson 2

April 8, 2010

A few more of my favourite words: pesadilla (peh-sah-dee-shaa) Nightmare.  Really?!  What a beautiful word for nightmare. llover (show-vehr) This is the verb for rain.  Rain is a verb! yo lluevo. I rain. vos lloves. You rain. el llueve. It rains. nosotros llovemos. We rain. ellos lloven. They rain. cuchillo (cooch-eee-shoh) Knife.  This is very […]






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While I was sleeping

April 8, 2010

I’m a night owl.  He’s an early bird.  I can sleep in till noon if left to my own devices.  He’s up prowling the apartment like a cat at 7.30 AM.  Sometimes he takes pictures of sunrises.  Like this morning.  I think I’ve only ever seen one, maybe two, sunrises in my life.  Once in […]






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First day of school! First day of school!

April 7, 2010

We spent the entire day yesterday trying to get me into Spanish for Foreigners at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA).  We trekked downtown, I took an oral and written exam, got a note from the ‘principal’ and then trekked all the way back into Palermo to attend class.  Phew!  So much walking and talking […]






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