Thursday, May 22, 2008

Day 5

Estoy bien. Argentina es fenomanal! Autobus pado, viaje a universidad es muy dificil hoy.

Enough Spanish, it´s hard for me enough...


Tuesday, we went on the city tour. I didn´t take my photo camera to school today so I wasn´t able to take any pictures. I still have been unable to get to a ¨ciber cafe¨so I haven´t been able to upload any photos or video. I did take my pocket video camera with me on the city tour so I will be able to add those later.

We visited numerous areas including Plaza de Independencia. Mendoza has a main plaza, then four satellite plazas. I also visited Plaza de San Martin and Plaza de España. You have to be very careful in the Plazas as it is very easy to get pick pocketed. We have already had two people who nearly got pick pocketed!

I called mom the other day and she said "you sound like a foreigner¨ and in a sense I did. Because after only a few days being here, I was constantly thinking in Spanish. So when I would be talking to here, I would be pausing because I has trying to figure out how to say something in Spanish then I would catch myse3lf and say it in English. However I still said many things in Spanish in talking to her. I am told after awhile you start dreaming in Spanish, but I haven´t remembered a dream yet, so I can´t say i have had one yet.

Classes are going well, so far the stuff we have been learning has been the easy stuff...or the stuff I already know, well maybe one thing I don´t know...how to use the verbs "estar" & "Ser" There are a total of 4 people in my class. I am the only one from Baylor and the other 3 are from Hawaii (what a heck of a trip eh?). Also one girl in my class is doing the same as me, taking all four Spanish credits during the summer.

I think my 5 most used phrases are
  1. Sí (yes)
  2. no entiendo (i don´t understand)
  3. yo entiendo ( i do understand)
  4. ?Que? (What?)
  5. !Hola! (Hi!)
I will have to say my pronunciation has gotten better. The pronunciation here is a bit different here than it in in the states. Like the "ll"pronounced in the states sound like a "yu" sound here "dj" also "yo" sound like "djyo"

I have been getting up about 7:30 in the morning and I am in bed by midnight, so I am nearly on a regular schedule. During the day I am still searching for things to do, especially today. I got bored because of a bus strike so it make transportation very hard here. You can take a taxi, but they are more expensive and hard to find today because so many people are using them.

There is a car that picks up a group of us each morning and takes us to school because the bus is never on time (no schedule really, the just come so many times per day). The bus would normally take about 40 minutes of so to get to class, but the car takes less than 10 minutes, plus when it gets cold here, it will be much warmer. I take the bus home which is about a 30 minute trip and it only costs 1.4 pesos. (1 USD = 3.15 pesos). Everything here is relatively cheap. I purchased a cell phone for $46 USD yesterday to use here in mendoza. It is prepaid and only about $.20 USD per minute & $.04 USD per text message.

One last thing, vehicles DO NOT STOP for pedestrians! Unless the driver doesn´t want a hood ornament, you WILL be hit!. It´s like playing Frogger in first person!

I must go now, so till next time, my adventure continues...

Salud,
-matt

1 comment:

ksjordan said...

¡Espero que usted esté disfrutando de su tiempo allí, Matt! ¡Manténganos informados en cuanto a todo que usted está haciendo!!