Second Block Edition: Tales from Miami Ad School Account Planning Bootcamp. Location: Minneapolis, MN.

5.28.2009

Argentina isn't crying for me. It's giving me a hug.

The first impression Argentina got of Elise Wyatt was of her wearing a medical mask and rubber gloves. The swine flu paranoia has spread to South America, but not enough to where people outside the airport bubble wear protective gear.
The city is wonderful. It has a mix of modern and old architecture, fashion, pollution, pedestrians, unforgiving public transit and dog walkers. With big cities also come taxi drivers who try to rip tourists off. Of course after being on a ten hour flight, sitting next to the bathrooms, you're subject to the persuasion of a overly decorous taxi driver. Needless to say, he tried to rip me off majorly for the trip, which is about 30-40 minutes. All the anger I felt was lost in translation, I mean he had let me speak terrible Spanish to him and believe it was good. I managed to only get out, "Es muy caro!" Exhausted, I handed him what I believed to be more than fair and told him that's all he was getting. I didn't need a dictionary for the words he said under his breath after that.
Yesterday I successfully acquired myself an Argentine cell phone and a place to live. All without fist fights or too many hang gestures. Living in a city where you're not great at the language will motivate you to do one thing. Take lessons. A gentlemen on the street today offered to give me private ones, but I kindly declined. Before he could pull out those business cards, I'm sure he had, I informed him that I had already got my hands on another tutor. Which is the truth, but fortunately my tutor comes with recommendations, but we'll have to see about the business cards.
Monday I will move into my place. That should be followed by my immediate immersion in a Spanish speaking house where I will be repeating "Bueno" y "Si." A lot. At least I'll have my own room to experience panic attacks.
Soon enough I'll be living that montage of 'girl in the big city.' You know what I'm talking about. Until I do, I'll be keeping myself busy not getting lost.
Signing off from a Buenos Aires hostel room.
-E.

5.11.2009

Translate this, Sarcasm.

I leave in two weeks. I would like to say that my Spanish hasn't improved since I got back from Chile, but let's be honest my 5 minute conversations with the cleaning lady every two weeks isn't even a mild contribution. In other news my nail-biting habit has returned and transformed my momentarily feminine hands into stumpy bits. I wouldn't exactly say that it's all out of nervousness, it's just proof that my resistance to physical change is forever challenged by my bad habits.
It's been decided that I will teach English as a second language while I'm in Buenos Aires. Exciting, since I'm so nice and patient with children. And I love English. They should teach sarcasm as a elective in College. It would be beneficial to those who don't find comfort in straight faces and harsh reality. That's the only things about when you're learning a new language. Sarcasm, it doesn't translate well. So I'll have to learn to be funny in a different way, which probably won't work out very well. This means I'm appologising ahead of time if I come back from Argentina with a dull sense of telling jokes. Or maybe I'll work on a method of telling stories that doesn't last half-an-hour.
Once my Spanish gets better I'd like to get a job working somewhere more authentic. Maybe like a Buenos Aires gift shop.