BsAs

Today I met the director of an Argentine/internationally syndicated maternity magazine, a customer service representative and one middle manager for Safmarine (a small shipping company), and a marketing analyst for Maersk (the largest shipping company in the world, which bought out Safmarine long ago). Today I went north to Belgrano, South to the commercial docks, and over to the most wealthy neighborhood in the city, Puerto Madero. This is all to say- today was my first day of work, for realsies.


My dear blogosphere, last night I went for an interview, and after stuttering my way across a whiteboard regarding the subtleties of present perfect tense and type III conditional constructions, Bobby told me to relax and asked me more specific questions. I felt better about that part of the evening, and was willing to accept that I'm not a professor (yet!), but he asked me to stay to observe a class. Álvaro is an IT guy, and I'm told he's a typical student. He's sincere, self conscious, and if his English doesn't improve he will be fired. We got along well, and the curriculum Bobby uses is very good and, more importantly, very straightforward. Bobby started talking about the importance of reliability while an increasing degree of self-doubt raised my heart rate. Then he asked what I was doing Friday morning, and today I got up at 6:30am to teach my first English class. It was with two very nice women who, like everyone else, gasp when they learn how young I am. Then I followed one of the other teachers around (a Canadian named Natasha, in the red sweater) to several classes, and I'll be doing much the same tomorrow. I'm not so confident yet, which seems reasonable to me, but the company I'm working with is very professional but is also a small, supportive group of (6) people. Also, I get to work all over the city in various offices (check out the view from up high). I'm excited for now, going to try to keep that going.


I'm moving into an apartment on Sunday, I guess you'll hear all about it then.