I cry when I laugh. I mean, my eyes water. Even just a little laugh can produce tears, but a real laugh has my eyes watering like crazy. Today in my arabic class my eyes were wet almost the entire time.
I was one of the earliest students there, I think maybe the 2nd, even though I arrived pretty close to 10. I stopped in the bar before class to get a cup of coffee and a medialuna (bar means cafe here - I'm not a lush).
When I got to the classroom, I said a-salamu-laikum to my teacher and kissed her good morning and took my seat. There was a new woman in the class, a short, older woman, maybe possibly in her 60's. She was talking to the teacher but I didn't pay much attention. I pulled out the cards I made to study the letters and tried to review a little, since I hadn't done much studying over the week, other than to make these cards for the 10 or so letters we were introduced to last week.
Another student, Fernando, arrived, and went around and kissed everyone, including me. I was curious to see if all of the students would kiss everyone. As more students came in, they just said good morning and went to their seats. Kissing didn't seem to be the norm (I need to know for when I enter the room and there are other people there).
It was after 10, but there were not very many students there. The teacher was writing the entire alphabet on the board - the name of the letter in roman letters and the arabic symbol. I made some flash cards and also copied them in my notebook.
When there were a handful of students, she started the lesson. I think the first thing we did was go over the alphabet. It is very confusing. There are a few letters that have the same name - I think there are three called "ha". I don't know what the difference is. I think the teacher said they are just written differently. I think there is more to it. I am finding that I'm missing some of the explanation. There are reasons for this. One, it is in Spanish, so I'm missing some things due to simple language, but also the room has terrible acoustics, and third, while the teacher talks, the other students are all talking.
It is total chaos.
This new student is a real character. Turns out she is Syrian, she said she is from Syria. But I don't know why she doesn't know Arabic. She also said she was a teacher - the worst kind of student (I'm an exception). She kind of took over the class several times. When the teacher was presenting a dialogue, the idea being that she would say a line and we'd repeat it, this woman took over and started reading the dialogue out loud before the teacher. The problem was she was reading the whole thing, including the Spanish translation, and she didn't know how to pronounce some words. The teacher stood there and smiled and then when the woman finished the teacher took over and started again. It was a mess.
The other guy who asked a lot of questions last week came late, and with him and this woman, the class became like a three ring circus. The other students, especially those sitting on my side of the room (these two were on the opposite side of the room) started making jokes about what was going on. That's when I started laughing, because the whole thing was so comical. First of all there were these letters that were the equivalent of random forms that noodles in soup can take, and then the ha, ha, ha, letters and za and za, which made no sense to me, and then this woman saying things like "I don't have the book so I don't know what we are doing" and the guy who asks a lot of questions asking a lot of questions and the other students making jokes about this new woman wanting to take this other guy sitting next to her on a date and him putting his arm on her chair like he was going to embrace her without her knowing he was doing this behind her back because she was so busy making excuses for why she was not paying attention.
I really liked the little corner of the room that I was in, and since other students didn't have books, I had two people sharing mine and it was a good way for me to get to talk to people, since the class itself was very teacher centered (well, and centered on these two students who were dominating it). When we were not working with the alphabet, the teacher went over three dialogues in the book, but the tape did not match the dialogue. For example the dialogue in the book was between two men, and then two women, to show us how gender changes some words, but the dialogue on the tape was between a man and a woman. The teacher said it was "the same" (I'm realizing she said that a lot when things were not really the same), but it was very confusing. Fortunately, the very nice woman sitting next to me, Claudia Duffy, was very helpful. I was surprised to see that Claudia's last name was Duffy when we made an e-mail list. She said her grandfather on her father's side was Irish and on her mother's side French! I'm still surprised to learn that there is such a big Lebanese-Syrian population here. They are the third largest group of immigrants in Argentina after the Italians (Spanish are number one). And here is a woman with an Irish last name! I really fit right in here!
The class was really a lot of fun and it's a great experience. I was thinking how I'd like to have the experience of not having any Spanish spoken at all and just have the class 100% in Arabic so I could really feel what my students experience, but it's hard enough for my Italian teacher to do a class in all Italian (even with it being very similar to Spanish), if our Arabic teacher were to try only speaking Arabic, I think the students would take over the class.
Taking over things seems to be big here.
I read the flyer I got from the little protest march that passed me after the traumatic robbery and it turns out a group of students took over their high school because there were 40,000 scholarships that were canceled by the Macri government (Buenos Aires gov't). The students took over the classrooms and even though the ministry of education forbid the teachers from giving classes, they continue to teach. There is also going to be a 24 hour teaching marathon. Wow, incredible!
I wonder what it would be like to be a teacher here.
Towards the end of class Hernan sent me a text. He wanted to know if I wanted to have lunch. He suggested we cook, but by the time I got home and he was waiting outside of my building for me, I suggested we go out to eat.
We went to a little restaurant around the block called "Celetto". It was very cheto. Burgundy walls with a mustard colored sofa and red velvet chairs. It was nice. I had grilled salmon and a cesar salad and Hernan had pasta with shrimp. We shared a very yummy chocolate cake for desert.
We came back here and Hernan uploaded a bunch of music onto my computer. I now have lots of cheto electronic music on my computer. It is a beautiful spring day and the sun was streaming into my bedroom as we both lay on my huge bed in the sun and took a nap, Hernan said "like cats". He just left to meet his crazy cousin from Corrientes Province and I need to get ready for my next tango lesson tonight with Marcelo.
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