June 20th

Today is the first day I have very little to do. It´s currently raining outside which wrecked the plans I had for today. Oh well, a little R and R never hurt.
Yesterday night was very interesting. My host family had a few English students over for dinner and I invited a few kids from my program to attend as well. We spoke some English, some Castellano, and some Spanglish. It was quite the mix. It was also a productive evening because I made a deal with my host mother. She is an English teacher for Spanish speakers but is willing to try teaching me some Spanish in return for me teaching English to some of her students. Did you get all that? My Spanish isn´t coming as rapidly as I was hoping, and beacuse my class is all more advanced than I am, it will be nice to have someone go over some more basic ideas than what is taught in class.
Today, I turned in my first large assignment, a 2 page history paper. That doesn´t sound too difficult, but it really was difficult. The concepts we are learning in class would be complicated if taught in English, but since they are in Spanish, difficulty is greatly enhanced. The content is really interesting once I know whats going on, it just can take awhile for that to occur.
This weekend I have made plans with other classmates to take more salsa dancing lessons on friday, and saturday our whole group will travel to Colonia (an old, old town about 3 hours NW of BA). It will be very interesting to see the dynamics of the different ¨clicks¨that have formed within our group. I can´t say there are any people who I have problems with from the group. That being said, I do like some more than others, but I get along with everyone. However, not all students are in the same boat. Some have actively expressed their disliking for others and I can´t wait to see some confrontations! I am getting so sick of hearing gossip from a select few, it´s time they let their emotions out.
I wish I had some more exciting news, but nothing too interesting has happened lately. I have been studying for about 3-4 hours each day of just grammer. I am really determined to learn this language, but it´s a lot harder than one might imagine.
Nos Vemos,
Chris