Learning Spanish the Hard Way

On Monday, I finally started my formal Spanish classes at tiny school called, predictably, Macchu Picchu Spanish School. Yes, I´m actually voluntarily waking up at 7 am every morning, to get school on time and take 4 hours of classes a day. And even more, I´m voluntarily spending my afternoons making and running through flash cards of verbs and their conjegations. But, then again, I´m doing it in cafes that overlook colonial plazas, so I guess my life is not that rough.

Also not rough: my living situation. I signed up to live with a host family. And I got a set up with a great one, but a typical peruvian household it´s not. I´m living at the house of the director of the school with three other students . The house also has two employees, Peruvian students, who cook us all our meals and clean our rooms in exchange for room and board. I not only have my own double bed, I have my own bathroom. I feel incredibly pampered, and not just a little guilty.

But there are some upsides:

Rosa and Gladys are the two Peruvian students who live here and they are fantastic. Rosa, particularly suffers through my slowly improving Spanish, and takes the time to sit and chat about her boyfriend and the trials and tribulations of her program at the university (she´s studying tourism.)

I´ve moved out of Central Cuzco and am now living on Avenida de la Cultura, where there is bearly a tourist in sight and the city buzzes along in muchos colores (many colores). Its fantastic to spend time in a completely different part of the city.

Finally, the other students are fantastic. I live with Erika (from North Carolina), Julie (from France) and Jackie (from England). I suppose Julie has reasons to dislike me as I took over Octavio´s room (he´s a gorgeous Brazilian who she just started dating) and he moved out, but she´s fantastic. After our welcome dinner last night, students and professors alike made their way to a dingy basement Karaoke bar, where we belted out some fantastic 80´s classics (the words on the prompter were hysterically incorrect) and struggled through some of our favorite spanish pop. Plus, Octavio sang Julie a love song. (left)

Among the selections:

• Girls Just Want to Have Fun (Cyndi Lauper)
• Living on a Prayer (Bon Jovi - Beth, I thought of you)
• A Whole New World (Disney´s Aladdin - Not my fault I swear. Chalita, who is Thai, was to blame for that.)
• A Dios Le Pido [I pray to God for this] (Juanes - Elisa, aren´t you proud of me??)
• Stairway to Heaven (Led Zepplin - Sonya, another French woman, hit this one to the rafters).

I´ve got singing til I´m hoarse down pat, and I can even translate the occasional sappy spanish love song (not so different from sappy American loves songs, it turns out.) Now, if I can just master future tense, I´ll be golden . . . .