We have just finished the third week and let's just say we are really into the grind of school. We pretty much follow the same routine everyday. Paul gets up early to read the paper and have a cafe' con leche at the cafe across the street. Then he meets with Jane and Maria for breakfast around 9:30. Together we work on school work for the rest of the morning and then we walk to the "subte" for our four stop ride and twenty minute walk to our school. We usually stop at one of the street corner cafe's for lunch sitting under the shade of the trees on the sidewalk or we just buy some fruit at one of the many stands in the neighborhood.
Class starts at 2:00pm and we have a twenty minute break at 3:30. Then at 4:50 we have a ten minute break and finish at 6:00pm. Surprisingly it goes pretty fast because you have to stay in it mentally or all is lost. Each day we walk all the way back home convincing ourselves this is good exercise. Just about every day we try and take a different route. No matter how we go, unless we stop to shop or do email, it takes us about 50 minutes.
As we get close to our neighborhood we plot which cafe we should stop at to recover from the walk with beer and water. We found that at several if you order some beer or wine, they deliver a small snack of some sort, peanuts, chips or something indistinguishable but crisp. So I am forced to . . .
After resting in the shade (always in the shade since the temps are close to 90), we continue on to Maria's where she will serve us our dinner. While we try to give her a suggested dinner time, she is very flexible allowing us to take our time on the way home if we wish. We find ourselves eating between 8:30 and 10:00pm on most nights. We seem to be sliding to a later time for dinner as is the custom in Argentina. The three of us usually have a little wine with dinner and attempt conversation. We sometimes try and discuss the news that is on TV. All of these discussions are quite ridiculously simple due to our current skill. We have hopes.
Next blog we will let you in on some of our recent cultural activities in the last two weeks.
Class starts at 2:00pm and we have a twenty minute break at 3:30. Then at 4:50 we have a ten minute break and finish at 6:00pm. Surprisingly it goes pretty fast because you have to stay in it mentally or all is lost. Each day we walk all the way back home convincing ourselves this is good exercise. Just about every day we try and take a different route. No matter how we go, unless we stop to shop or do email, it takes us about 50 minutes.
As we get close to our neighborhood we plot which cafe we should stop at to recover from the walk with beer and water. We found that at several if you order some beer or wine, they deliver a small snack of some sort, peanuts, chips or something indistinguishable but crisp. So I am forced to . . .
After resting in the shade (always in the shade since the temps are close to 90), we continue on to Maria's where she will serve us our dinner. While we try to give her a suggested dinner time, she is very flexible allowing us to take our time on the way home if we wish. We find ourselves eating between 8:30 and 10:00pm on most nights. We seem to be sliding to a later time for dinner as is the custom in Argentina. The three of us usually have a little wine with dinner and attempt conversation. We sometimes try and discuss the news that is on TV. All of these discussions are quite ridiculously simple due to our current skill. We have hopes.
Next blog we will let you in on some of our recent cultural activities in the last two weeks.
