Adventures in South America

Classes, Classes, Classes!

Recently in my whirlwind of trying to experience everything here before we shortly have to leave, I have been taking a few new classes as well as teaching classes! I have wanted to learn how to drive a standard (stick shift) automobile for some years now. Although Dad has been patient enough to try to teach me, most people are not comfortable teaching someone new on their car, and I am never in DC long enough to dedicate the required amount of time needed to learn this skill. In addition, the formal classes in the DC area are very expensive. I have therefore been taking classes here the last couple of weeks at a driving school called Driver's in the city of Vicente Lopez (in the province of Buenos Aires, but not in the city of Buenos Aires - just over the city line). There are very few driving schools located in the city of Buenos Aires as the regulations within the city limits are very stringent for these types of vehicles and apparently it is not uncommon to be stopped constantly by police asking for registrations, etc and generally being a pain. My teacher is named Maximo and he is great. He speaks NO english so in addition to learning how to drive I am also improving my spanish. He is very patient and reminds me to stay calm amoung the crazy Porteño drivers. As each class passes I am becoming more and more comfortable - although I told Maximo that he is going to have to come with me to the states to be my road dog whenever I am driving standard transmission :-) I think that I just need a few more classes. The reason why I wanted to take classes is because travelling internationally it is nearly impossible to rent anything other than a standard transmission car. If there are automatic cars available, a HIGH premium is charged for these vehicles.

I started wine classes this evening. The Argentine magazine Cuisine&Vins is holding a 4 week seminar conducted by Franny fPolimeni from Mendoza. It is being held at the LoiSuites Recoleta Hotel and tonite we had an overview of wines. The regions that wines are grown in (30-50 latitude North and South of the Equator is where most of the wine regions lie), the proper dimensions for a wine glass, climates that wine grapes must be grown in and other details. We also tried 6 different types of wines - a white Chardonnay, a Rose, and 4 red wines (Cabernet Sauvignons, Merlots, Malbecs). We were shown how to taste a wine - observe the wines color against a white background, smell the wine, agitate the wine, smell it again and take the first sip as if you are slurping soup so that the whole mouth has the sensory experience of the wine. I am not sure how much of the classes I will remember, but all in all I enjoyed it. There were about 35 people in the class.

We also started to take Tango classes with our friend Fernando. Hmm... we have a long way to go. We are learning Milonga style, which is very close - basically chest to chest and cheek to cheek. We are taking these classes every Thursday.

The last two days I spent teaching english classes with my new friend Desiree. She has her own company called Brainwave that teaches english. Over the course of Monday and Tuesday I taught 6 classes and worked with 10 students who are all employees of Peoplesoft/Oracle. All of the students have an intermediate or better level of english. My job was to encourage them to speak, go through some case study exercises and then discuss at the end what mistakes were made. Desiree is a very enthusiastic person and her energy is contagious.

posted by Kathy T @ 11:47 PM