subte smoosh

7:45am came too early. it's still better than my 6:30am when i lived in the states. however, bedtime in the states always came much sooner. at least i had a good nights sleep.

so, i woke up, showered and jumped on the subte at 8:30am. around 9am i met a conversation exchange friend. she asked me if i would teach her english once a week. she does translations for a living and needs to stay on top of common english sayings. i really like her, so i stayed around afterward to catch up and chat.

i came home for a bit, ate lunch and prepped for my two later classes. while i was in the apartment my weekend portero came over to paint the other bedroom. the apartment is still being repaired, but at least i have my living room back.

i headed back out around 2 and was in centro around 2:30.

when i first arrived in b.a. i arranged to meet porteños (people from buenos aires) through a website called conversationexchange. i met some nice people, but my level of spanish was so low at the time that the exchange really didn't benefit me. i found myself speaking in english most of the time, so i stopped. however, i'm glad i tried it because i made two good porteña friends this way.

so, now that i can hold more of a conversation and i haven't been conversing as much as i should i met a conversationexchange person at 2:30 today. he was very nice. we spoke spanish most of the time which pleased me. i loved that he didn't try to fill in my pauses while i thought of the right word or verb tense. he wants to improve his english because it's his dream to live in austrailia.

at 4pm i met with a student, then i left his office to get on the subte around 5pm. ooff. it was the worst i've ever seen the subte...ever! once i went through the turnstile i stood on the platform with a few others...then waited as the platform swelled with people and no subte arrived to relieve the platform. more time passed as more people packed the platform....waiting for the train. about 10-15 min passed. (this was at rush hour! 5 pm on a friday in a city of 4 million). once the subte finally arrived i was lucky enough for a subte door to open in front of me. the subte gods blessed me with a seat, as most of my platform friends shoved (and i mean shoved) their way onto the train. generally the subte smash is done in a quite fashion, but today was different. someone yelled "it's full" and at another stop a rowdy porteño whistled! whistled!? (whistling loudly or speaking up on the subte would be equivalent to our american shreik + some choice swear word + a kick. each subsequent subte stop got worse and worse for my friends (again i was lucky enough to have a seat and just observe the smooshing of porteños).

i arrived late to my 5:30 private student. i really like the student. he's young, shy and very polite, but i don't like teaching him as much. it has nothing to do with him at all. he's at a very basic level.... and i just don't know if he is getting it or if i'm just confusing him. (i don't want to give him a pre and post test either).

well, i bet that is how my poor spanish teacher feels about me!