What level is this anyway?

Sorry I haven’t written in a while…  There was a near disaster that involved a leaky water bottle, my iPod, computer and ALL of my cables.  Don’t worry, I may actually carry a little of the Irish luck associated with my heritage.

I left off with my adventures in Pinamar, but I just realized I never wrote anything about school here.  Let me tell you, it’s been such an adventure.  We began our Argentinean school system experience with an exam to determine what level we’re in—a process which, in total, took several hours.  Finally, I was placed in Intermediate 2 (the third level of four aka 300-level Spanish), and after much debate and e-mailing with my department head from home, found that I would be given credit for this period of my study abroad. 

The class was an intensive month of Spanish.  It was mostly review, but a much-needed refresher course with the added bonus of intense language practice.  I’m not totally fluent as of yet, but my Spanish continues to grow day by day.  Pia, my teacher, was pretty tough on my class.  She felt absolutely no remorse in telling the slower students that they needed to work harder or those of us (*ahem*) who weren’t correctly pronouncing certain vowel sounds (if you ask me, “a” and “o” are very similar sounds).  Despite her frankness, it was obvious that she expected only the best from her students, and I think, for the most part, we had great success.

Ours was the “chica clase” with fifteen students that were all females, so you can imagine the kind of atmosphere my class contained, especially when you have one class for a five hour duration.  By the second or third day, a clique had developed of the “cool” girls—you know, the snotty, uninterested whiney type.  They felt the need to share their party stories and hangover complaints during class time.  Riveting stuff, I assure you.  The other ten or so women in the class were very sweet and mostly focused, so it was easy to ignore the more frustrating attitudes in the class.

The last day of class we said our goodbyes and a handful of us accompanied Pia to the copy center to make copies of our final grades.  Pia hugged and kissed us goodbye and we all went our separate ways.  I really enjoyed the more intimate atmosphere of that class, and I’m hopeful to have a similar situation in my new class beginning tomorrow morning (only six students!).