Today the whole day is about Spanish, have to get up at 6am so that I can arrive at the school to take a placement test. As we are waiting at the garden, I chat up with the guy next to me, he is another Swiss guy, very very young, 21 maybe? And he is planning to go to army training in Colombia and Cuba for 1 year. Another 2 Quebec French Canadian join in. They are all very young, 19 and 20 or something like that, these two Canadian is spending 3 months in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador, to study Spanish and to have "fun". They all seem to be very fun loving people. And even suggest me to join them to Machu Picchu, in the cheapest way they have found out from a friend of friend, that we will take a 5 hours bus, to remote location and walk on the train tracks for hell knows how long, as he describes, it may be dangerous but it is gonna be really cheap and have lots of funs. Get to this point, I already like... ah, you should have asked me earlier (like I meant it), I have already joined the 2 days trekking to Machu Picchu. Inside I am thinking they are way to young and immature. I would not do that kind of trip in a million year. Either way, they are still very friendly, we have talks and laughs. I even teach them a few Chinese words for fun.
After the test, of course, I will put in the beginner class. Some of the classes start right away, including mine. They would alternate each week, so this week, I have 4 hours Spanish class in the morning Monday thru Friday, next week it will in the afternoon. Each day, there are 2 sessions with two different teachers. The first teacher Paulo is a bit fast, his portion focuses in listening and speaking, it scares me a little and I start to wonder if they have put me in the right class, seems I follows him with some difficulty, but I manage to get past the first 2 hours. The next teacher is a woman, called Nury, she is much more friendly and clear in many ways, she is teaching pronouns, verb to be, and conjugation of 3 groups of verbs..etc. I actually enjoy the 2nd half of the class a lot, and am able to follow at least.
In my class, there are 6 students, me, two German girls, two Americans (the male from Chicago, the female from Boston), and one British guy who was an accountant or working for accounting, but wanted to do something more meaningful with his life - that sounds so familiar - like I had the same idea many years ago. He and one of the Germans studied some Spanish before, and the rest of us has not. I sat between the two Americans. The Boston girl is so much easier to talk, and I also have a chat with the Brit too. The Germans pretty stick with themselves, and the Chicagoean who is a black guy is also very quiet. I told him I just graduated from DePaul, and he is studying in Northwestern but taking a year off. Overall, I think we will get along and probably will have more interactions in the coming weeks.
In the evening, the school provides a welcome dinner, I am unfortunately seated in a group of French speaking people. I was kind of bored to death because they are speaking French and Spanish all night, just two seats away are my classmates. I should have sat by them and get to know them better. Oh well... tomorrow I suppose.
No photos today, because I have not done nothing except Spanish and calling the airlines. More about my change of plan next.
