Young Again, Kind Of

As I alluded to in earlier posts, I'm not thrilled with my school. My frustrations continue despite my best efforts & I'm losing patience, especially when I realize that I'm essentially half way done with my 3 weeks of class. They continue to push technical grammar which is great for people taking a slow & regimented progression but it's largely useless for me. In fact it confuses me & makes me less confident with my ability to speak.

What I want (& what the school's literature led me to believe I was going to get) is lessons on usage followed by extended chances to practice with a teacher moderating the discussion & correcting our mistakes. What I actually get reminds me so much of high school that I find myself staring out the window & wondering when class will be over. I'm not retaining much & I can't really apply a lot of what I do remember. I'm blowing off my homework as I type because I really can't be bothered to write down sentences using bitransitive verbs & demonstrating proper use of subjects, direct objects, indirect objects, "cliticos de pronombres", etc. It's a shame but I really feel like the teenager I was who hated school & was angry at the world because I was forced to attend daily. It's even more of a shame because I truly want to learn Spanish but I don't see it happening this way.

So to cheer myself up I decided to buy myself a new book. I just finished reading "The Devil in the White City" and I loved it (I'm an unabashed history buff) but it left me with nothing in English to read. I had planned to try to read a book in Spanish next but with my current level of frustration I thought a book in English would soothe me. There's a well known book store in Condesa called "El Pendulo" so I strolled down a street called Nuevo Leon after class which runs along the gorgeous Parque España right to the store. It's a great place with a huge range of books & laid out to encourage people to take books off the shelves & read right there. The staff were really helpful & nobody mocked me when I chose a great work of Spanish literature translated into English- "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel García Marquez. Well, I mocked myself but nobody listened. I hope to be able to read it in it's proper language one day as I plan to continue my Spanish education beyond my current school regardless of this experience so far.

My food story of the day brings me to a strange place- an Italian restaurant in a posh neighborhood here in the DF. My friend really wanted to take me there & as I had no other plans I figured it would be a nice change from all the Mexican food I've been eating. They had a nice Lambrusco by the bottle at a very good price & we shared a terrific goat cheese & walnut salad as an appetizer. For my main course I had a tortured debate with myself. My favorite non-stuffed pasta is probably Bucatini all'Amatriciana and they had Fettuccine Amatriciana on the menu. So do I try one of my favorites in this very non-Italian setting, or do I go with a simple pasta that nobody can get wrong? I went with the Amatriciana and I'm sorry to say I chose wrong. It wasn't terrible- they cooked bacon with onions then tossed in some marinara so you had the makings of a fine dish- but it certainly wasn't Amatriciana & the pasta was overcooked. I'd go back for wine & snacks, but I don't think I'll have pasta again until I return to NYC. For those of you who don't know this dish but would like to try it, the best I've had in NYC is oddly on the Upper East Side at a small family-run restaurant called Carino on 2nd Avenue near 89th Street. It's been years so I can't vouch for the current quality, but when I dated a woman who lived nearby I went almost weekly. And if you know the dish & have a favorite place of your own please share it with me, or just take me there to welcome me home in November. ¡Besos!