The singing elevator

We found our casa on Airbnb. It happens to be on the the 4th floor. It's got stairs which we take alot. Gives us a chance to grab some heavy breathing going up the stairs, and it also has a, "singing elevator." We even gave it a nickname, José.

Now most elevators will have a bit of musak playing when you ride them. But José  plays old American 60's songs, 24 hours a day, he never stops, and always plays in a loop. So, "I've got that peacefulllll...easy feeling..."  can get a bit stale after awhile. We know we're going crazy when one of us starts to hum it!

Now I don't know why they chose to include the singing option in José, the ride only takes less than a minute, but the music goes on forever.

Jose the Singing Elevator

No english

Came across this video about these two guys trying to learn a foreign language. They claim a fast way to learn a language is to go cold turkey and only speak the language you are learning. So no english.

Well I thought I would try this. But it is proving harder that I thought. I keep wanting to speak in english because my spanish is so awful. I only know a limited vocabulary in spanish so getting my point across is not easy. 

Give it a try, it might help you.

http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/myprojects/the-year-without-english-2/

Spanglish with beer pong is fun

Learning Spanish is not easy. I had spanish way back in middle school for a semester, so all I remember are some numbers, a few days of the week some months and a few greetings. But, I learned I could always remember the days of the weekend if I ran the two words together. So "sábadodomingo" formed a nice sounding long word. Kind of sounds like a saint's name or an opera singer.

Part of what makes Spanish difficult is all the many verb tenses. They have one for present, for past, future, almost future, almost past and maybe it might happen in the future verb tenses. And on top of that, almost all the tenses can be plural or singular or masculine or feminine. And there is a neuter or two thrown-in to keep you honest. My head was spinning and feeling like it's going to (va a) explode!

OK, maybe I should meet some locals and practice some spanish, how bad can it be? 

I checked out the local Buenos Aires online Meetup for local groups to practice spanish and spotted Spanglish. It's a group that gets together at a bar. For 10 minutes you speak english and then you switch to spanish for another 10 minutes and back and forth. 

The concept sounded fine. So I went. It was at a bar just down the street from our apartamento in Palermo, Hollywood. It was Friday night and there were about 30 people for Spanglish. We divided up into groups and started. Well, maybe I just getting old but the bar music was really loud so I could barely hear everyone without shouting. I did meet some interesting people. One local youg guy was a guitar player that played modern Tango music, pretty cool. There were lots of locals there that needed to learn English for their jobs, so it was interesting.

But at the table next to us was a big group that looked like it was having an office party, and they were all having an intense game of beer pong. I've never played it but it looks like a sure way to get drunk. So all the shouting and yelling and drinking just added to the decibel level. I think I strained my vocal chords that night.

So needless to say I didn't get that much "spanish learning" out of the experience. But I think the concept is sound, just the venue was wrong. I plan to go back, and next time I'll bring my own ping pong balls.