Small victories

I thought I knew a fair amount of Spanish.  And then I came to Buenos Aires.  It's not only that I lost almost all of my vocab and the gazillion tenses in Spanish, but the Portenos speak with a Castillan accent.  Apparently, it's one of the worst places to learn Spanish for anywhere other than Catalan, Spain.  However, in the last 3 weeks, I have gone from feeling relatively lost to today, where I had 2 small, but important victories for me.

After school, I went to a large bookstore to look for some books in English and for a young adult book in Spanish so I can work my way through it.  I was able to ask the woman at the book store for her recommendation for an Argentinian author for young adults that would help me learn more Spanish.  She understood what I wanted and I was able to choose a book of short stories by an author called:  Horacio Quiroga.  I was happy to have communicated totally in Spanish with a native speaker about things that you don't practice in class.  

All the streets here are one-way.  There might be 2 or 3 very large streets that are two-way streets, but those are very few.  This is usually a great thing, as you only have to look one way when crossing the street, but it is difficult when trying to figure out a where to pick up a return bus.  Apart from the bus going along an entirely different street, the buses zig zag all over the place and so unlike Chicago, where you can take the Addison Street bus and it drives along Addison both directions, here you have to figure out where to pick up the bus and whether or not it will turn off the main street before or after you want to get off. Tonight was the first night that I was able to take the bus one way to a restaurant and then ask the waitress where to pick up the return bus.  And I completely understood her answer!  It was as though I was actually communicating in another language!  :-) 

All this is to say: I feel like I'm finally communicating and understanding and really living here.  I am starting to not be nervous about asking for things or unsure of what to say, although I still butcher the language, I am getting my point across.  And that's really the point of communication.  So today was a day of small, but important victories for me.

Chau!