spanish class, day two

i have a very strong urge to write as much of this as i can in spanish but i feel that might be a bit pretentious since my readers obviously don´t speak it? however please note that while writing this I´m really struggling with english grammar, after concentrating on spanish all morning!!

spanish class: it´s really fun having structure in the day and using our brains again. caro and I are in different groups, because I did night classes in Perth before we left.

on day one I was put in a class WAY above my head. I couldn´t believe how hard it was. the teacher tries to speak in spanish as much as possible during the lesson, and when someone is explaining a concept to you that is a level beyond what you have learnt, using vocabulary you don´t know, and talking about grammatical concepts you don´t understand because australian schools don´t teach grammar... it´s pretty exhausting / demoralising.

I did actually learn a few things, to my surprise, but it was a hellish process.

today was much better. I am in a private class now, since there is nobody else at my level (I pay the same but I only get three hours a day rather than four). it´s pretty sweet.

we have a good set-up at the moment: decent hostel (with a guitar!!!), nice town, meeting some cool people, learning spanish. we´re thinking of staying a bit longer and doing another week´s spanish here. this will suck a bit money-wise, but after a month of struggling through with our Very Average spanish skillz it is also a very attractive concept.

there is a vegetarian supplies shop in town (and a vegetarian restaurant somewhere), also a million parrillas (grilling bars? it´s an argentinian thing, lots of meat basically). we´ll go with some of the other people from our spanish class to a parrilla sometime this week, cos (even though caro doesn´t mind going) I don´t want to be the only one at our table being served some 0.5kg of meat!! (not a joke.) caro can have chips or something.

also: the lonely planet told us ¨bariloche is very touristy¨. well... I guess so, in that ¨there is tourist stuff here¨ but to be honest it´s really quite nice. el calafate (el hellhole) was heaps worse on the tourist factor. maybe it gets bad in winter during ski season, or something?

and then onwards to... we are not sure. bariloche was the extent of our planning...!