It's already day 2 of classes and I'm loving it; I'm regaining confidence with my spanish although still really struggling with the accent! I'm in a class with 2 Brazilians and 2 Dutch students and love hearing more about totally different parts of the world. I have classes from 9am-2pm with a few breaks in between and then from 2-4:00...tango!
My tango class consists of 3 Brazilian girls (over half the students in the school are from Brazil) and one American woman on hiatus for a year. She teaches high school spanish in St. Louis and is enjoying the opportunity to improve her own spanish as well as taking a well deserved break. I had another "small world" moment when she told me she has a kiwi boyfriend, has lived in Madrid, and is from the U.S. Weeiiird!
Our teacher is also a female so for the students, I believe this
passionate dance is missing a little of...the passion-where are the
dudes?! At least we are definitely learning! In our first class on Monday we started with stretching. I swear we stretched more than I ever have
when going out for a run or playing basketball. I didn't exactly see
the purpose of 10 minutes of head rolls and "reaching for the sky" but
I'll tell you what, that was absolutely the most confident 10 minutes of my time
in class so I am now an incredibly enthusiastic stretcher! After stretching we moved on to some more difficult moves (I guess I can say that, what's not more difficult than stretching?) After having to practice even the simplest things several times, I really appreciate the professionals. You know that quote, "dance like nobody's watching?" I repeated that to myself several times and hopefully no one was, poor things!
After class we went for a little cultural outing to La Boca (the mouth), a barrio, or neighborhood in Buenos Aires. La Boca is famous for it’s live tango performances that take place in the streets as well as performances in various restaurants where patrons can take in a show while eating. It's extremely touristy with every shop selling trinkets and souvenirs but very cool nonetheless. There are two main streets housing most of the activity and both are gorgeous to look at. In Caminito, splashes of bright color decorate every wall and most building have a different color for every side of the house. At the beginning of the street are heaps of vendors selling all things tango and men ready to charge you to stick your head in a cut-out similar to the ones at any amusement park. Not only can you stick your head in a hole, take a snapshot and send it to your parents (they will totally believe that it’s you!) but you can elect to dress-up and take seductive tango pictures with actual dancers so when you go home, you can brag about your "casual day of tango in the streets." Had I not mentioned it in this blog, a picture of me casually dancing the tango would have found it’s way to quite a few of your homes. You’ll have to settle for a personal lesson of head rolling and reach for the skys instead. With those, I’m kind of amazing.
