Friday, October 2, 2009

You Can Take It To The Bank

I was a victim of lofty expectations in class 22. The teaser from class 21 is that we would be learning a new tense, which we did, however, it was the present progressive tense. I have been looking forward to learning about and practicing past or future tenses for some time now, therefore, today's class was a bit disappointing. The present progressive tense is pretty straightforward, and thankfully Bueno, entonces... Learn Spanish didn't spend a whole lot of time on it. That being said I did learn a new irregular gerund (I never thought I would ever use that word in a sentence) - yendo (ir).

Don't get me wrong though. Today's class had it's share of entertaining discussion such as David's ridiculous run-in with a transvestite (travesti) at the bank. Bueno, entonces... Learn Spanish used this farcical account to introduce lots of great nuts-and-bolts bank vocabulary that I am sure to use.

The discussion about banking segued nicely into a rant on how difficult it is to get change in Buenos Aires - something that I have been bitching about since I got here. Several weekends we have been unable to take the bus or do laundry due to a lack of change. Furthermore, shop owners look at us bizarrely or even get angry when we ask them to break a two peso bill (don't even try to ask for change for a five - fireworks). Getting change has now become a twice or thrice weekly routine for me. I usually hit up two or three banks in succession (because each can only give 3-20 pesos in change at a time), and have amassed a stockpile of about sixty pesos in change - unheard of in these parts. You have to take pride in small victories when you're living abroad, because so much of daily life outside of the U.S. is humbling.

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