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

10.22.2009

A different side of new.

So most of you might be confused at the idea of me teaching students English. You might have this idea that I spend hours a days drilling words like joke, jealous, happy, jump to those who do not normally pronounce these consonants or maybe that I review placement of prepositions and the use of the -ing. Although, we cannot under-estimate the importance of teaching English grammar, my students usually have an idea of how this works and therefore they would rather teach me a thing or two about Argentine culture. At first, I felt mildly guilty about this, but then I realized these classes are paid for by the students' company, a multimillion dollar consulting firm, and for an hour they would simply like to not feel like an Argentine corporate drone. Today my student spent his hour explaining to me (with a diagram included) exactly how the football teams and divisions work here. He also disclosed his desire to be a sports commentator. And with all his Argentine passion, in a conference room at his work, he acted out his radio commentator skills with a commercial included. Needless to say we drew in a few walk-by stares. After this he also confessed to wanting to become a Rastafarian. He's been reading books on the religion (ummm it's a real active relgion? Yes, apparently so.) since he was 15. And he carries a Rastafarian coin, or something of that matter, in his wallet. So if you're ever wondering where you can fall in love with a White-collar-corporate-drone-Rastafarian-sports-commentator. Come to Argentina. I teach them English.

My friends Lindsey and Anna were here last week. Lots of fun debauchery. Pleanty of eating out, too. I even ate Argentina's best attempt at Mexican food. I will say it did satisfy my itch for guacamole and steak burrito. I even got a satisfactory taste of some vegetarian Indian/Hindi food. And of course I had to introduce them to the magic of the Buenos Aires night. A city that stays alive past the rising of the sun. And sometimes then is the start of the best improvisational dance-offs. But it was good to see some familiar faces. I'm going on five months, and it was nice to have someone from home to see.

I moved into my new place this past Monday. I'm excited to be here. The neighborhood is going to be a great fit for me. It's two blocks from the metro and a twenty-minute walk from one of the companies where I work a lot. My neighborhood, San Telmo, has a lot of working class people, but also a fair amount of tourism. The former is quite different from where I was living, considering before I was a block from Fendi and Cartier. But because money and status isn't my forte, I think I'll be quite happy here. I have my own room and for the first time of all my places I have a real closet with hangers. So I can actually hang up my clothes. There are two other rooms in the apartment, one is a couple, a guy from Columbia and his girlfriend is from Holland, and the other is a guy from Ecuador. On Saturday they are having a party here, so I'll get to know them all better. And, after a week of speaking only English with my friends and students, I'm going to need the help with my Spanish.

I'm going to an Argentine fiesta de cumpleaƱos tomorrow night! Should be fun.

Ciao chicos!
-E.

2 comments: