It is not uncommon for travelers to Buenos Aires to take Spanish lessons with a local. There are also a number of institutes offering both Spanish and English private and group classes. In fact, Tats is scheduled to attend an intensive beginner class October - December, at the University here in the city.
As for myself and the boys, I figured we'd get by on my limited Spanish, acquired on various high school band trips to Spain, Mexico and Costa Rica, and the mother-induced "Spanish in 10 Minutes a Day" text which preceded it.
Also, I reasoned, we'd be too busy with home schooling (including French), to take Spanish lessons. We'd be fine!
Alas... one really cannot get by for more than a few days without at least a little Spanish here, as I am coming to realise. And my generic "Donde esta el telefono?" and "Me gusta tu motocycletta" just wasn't doing it for us. So, I began to research and haggle.
I soon found us a fellow, the Talking Monkey, he calls himself, who was willing to give us 8-10 beginner, family Spanish lessons, in our home, in exchange for me getting him online. Quite the artist, he drew his own logo. His (at the time of writing this blog post still very much "under construction") website is here.
Today was our first lesson, and as we covered introductions as well as the first half of the alphabet, and related phrases. Jorge, who is originally from Columbia but came to Argentina to study (he's a biologist) comes back on Wednesday; we'll try to do Wednesdays and Saturdays for an hour or so. First half with the kids, then a little more in-depth for me and Tats. We posted our notes from the first lesson by the kitchen table, for easy review.
As we were discussing his website, Jorge asked whether either of us knew anything about "Latex". Tats and I looked at each other, wondering if perhaps we had stumbled upon some kind of kink fetish our new teacher had... it turned out, though, that he was inquiring about "LaTex" a sort of programming language for math and science stuff. Turns out he is thinking about translating a math text for someone. And, wouldn't you know it -- Tats knew exactly what he was talking about!!!
We might just get a few more free lessons out of the Talking Monkey yet!
As for myself and the boys, I figured we'd get by on my limited Spanish, acquired on various high school band trips to Spain, Mexico and Costa Rica, and the mother-induced "Spanish in 10 Minutes a Day" text which preceded it.
Also, I reasoned, we'd be too busy with home schooling (including French), to take Spanish lessons. We'd be fine!
Alas... one really cannot get by for more than a few days without at least a little Spanish here, as I am coming to realise. And my generic "Donde esta el telefono?" and "Me gusta tu motocycletta" just wasn't doing it for us. So, I began to research and haggle.
I soon found us a fellow, the Talking Monkey, he calls himself, who was willing to give us 8-10 beginner, family Spanish lessons, in our home, in exchange for me getting him online. Quite the artist, he drew his own logo. His (at the time of writing this blog post still very much "under construction") website is here.
Today was our first lesson, and as we covered introductions as well as the first half of the alphabet, and related phrases. Jorge, who is originally from Columbia but came to Argentina to study (he's a biologist) comes back on Wednesday; we'll try to do Wednesdays and Saturdays for an hour or so. First half with the kids, then a little more in-depth for me and Tats. We posted our notes from the first lesson by the kitchen table, for easy review.
As we were discussing his website, Jorge asked whether either of us knew anything about "Latex". Tats and I looked at each other, wondering if perhaps we had stumbled upon some kind of kink fetish our new teacher had... it turned out, though, that he was inquiring about "LaTex" a sort of programming language for math and science stuff. Turns out he is thinking about translating a math text for someone. And, wouldn't you know it -- Tats knew exactly what he was talking about!!!
We might just get a few more free lessons out of the Talking Monkey yet!