This is what is currently going on over my shoulder as I type this blog:
Sunday afternoon - I walked the 8 minutes to the nicer mall very close to our house. This mall looks almost exactly as the malls I am used to at home, and since Sunday was a rainy day, it was hoppin. It has wide, clean, and busy walk ways with endless shops and stands lining the outsides. Mostly modern over prices clothing and/or accessories. It also has a very large food court featuring McDonalds, Burger King, a chinese food place, and about 9 other fast food options. I got a burrito from a place that presented itself like Qdoba, but don't worry, it was not even close to comparable. Here, queso means dry, normal cheese, so that just throws the competition out the window right there. It was average at best, but well worth the experience. Behind the food court was an extensive kids play area. This mall also featured a spacious courtyard with 2 sit down restaurants, and a huge "Rockefellers" directly across the street, basically attached to the mall. The Rockefellers is very nice, it looks like it was built last week and could be featured in Times Square. Before I even mention the movie theatre, the point is, this mall was tremendously impressive in general and much more than that when compared to most other venues I have seen in this city. It wasn't hard to comprehend why it was so crowded.
I really went to the mall to see a movie, but I had no time frame so I did a lot of walking around. The movie theatre is definitely just as upper class with a very large central concourse area featuring 2 sit-down restaurants and plenty of TVs. My ticket to see Birdman (in English with Spanish subtitles) was $95 pesos or about $8 USD. What! More than Valley View! But the most outrageous thing was that an extremely large tub of popcorn (probably feeds 4 comfortably) was a simple $45 pesos (<$4 USD). This is how I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore. ALSO - there is no such thing as salted popcorn here, it is all sweet, kind of like kettle corn. Like salt on popcorn does not exist in public places, a local friend confirmed it for me. Gah, if only they knew what they were missing out on. However, in the end, the movie experience at this mall was strikingly similar to back home in the States, and I really enjoyed the entire experience.
Monday - This week I have 2 hours of individual 1 on 1 classes every day, instead of 4 hours of group classes. But I have a lot of trip planning to do so that works out.
I went home at about 4:30 to help with the kids, and we played for a long while. Lumi is obsessed with me pushing her on the swing, and I am trying hard to get her to say please. Right now it is "amarca me!" (Swing me). Now I'll just say no until she says please. I'm also trying to teach her how to say Vamos in English - Let's go. Because this is an extremely important phrase.
At around 8:30 I departed to watch the 9pm Newell's soccer game at Carlos' (the PT) house. He lives pretty far across the city, so I knew it would be a trek, and of course I forgot my map and got lost twice because the street signage is virtually nonexistent. So what should have been a half hour trip turned into an hour of cluster and wandering through the "less safe" part of town. But with Carlos' aid, I made it there and we spent 2 hours practicing English over homemade pizza, seafood from Playa Del Mar, and soccer. He is going to Russia in April so needs the English practice. There is definitely no Spanish there. I got home safely and efficiently.
Tuesday - (today) It has been raining all day, and at 1pm there was a slim chance we were going to play soccer tonight. I was not happy about that. But, because someone up there loves me, it cleared up later this afternoon and the game is on. Thank holy moses, I live for Tuesday night futbol. During class today, we translated in detail an article about Baseball in Rosario. It is very intriguing but also very dense as there is seriously unlimited vocabulary in Spanish. I babysat the kids this afternoon for a couple of hours, and we spent a significant amount of time singing Frozen songs in Spanish. The YouTube videos were playing on my phone, and the kids started to argue about who should hold the phone, but I told them to stop bickering and just Let It Go.
I'm sure someone in the states, maybe even in Texas, was babysitting toddlers like me and attempted to entertain them by asking: Do You Want To Build A Snowman?
I went home at about 4:30 to help with the kids, and we played for a long while. Lumi is obsessed with me pushing her on the swing, and I am trying hard to get her to say please. Right now it is "amarca me!" (Swing me). Now I'll just say no until she says please. I'm also trying to teach her how to say Vamos in English - Let's go. Because this is an extremely important phrase.
At around 8:30 I departed to watch the 9pm Newell's soccer game at Carlos' (the PT) house. He lives pretty far across the city, so I knew it would be a trek, and of course I forgot my map and got lost twice because the street signage is virtually nonexistent. So what should have been a half hour trip turned into an hour of cluster and wandering through the "less safe" part of town. But with Carlos' aid, I made it there and we spent 2 hours practicing English over homemade pizza, seafood from Playa Del Mar, and soccer. He is going to Russia in April so needs the English practice. There is definitely no Spanish there. I got home safely and efficiently.
Tuesday - (today) It has been raining all day, and at 1pm there was a slim chance we were going to play soccer tonight. I was not happy about that. But, because someone up there loves me, it cleared up later this afternoon and the game is on. Thank holy moses, I live for Tuesday night futbol. During class today, we translated in detail an article about Baseball in Rosario. It is very intriguing but also very dense as there is seriously unlimited vocabulary in Spanish. I babysat the kids this afternoon for a couple of hours, and we spent a significant amount of time singing Frozen songs in Spanish. The YouTube videos were playing on my phone, and the kids started to argue about who should hold the phone, but I told them to stop bickering and just Let It Go.
I'm sure someone in the states, maybe even in Texas, was babysitting toddlers like me and attempted to entertain them by asking: Do You Want To Build A Snowman?