Well who would have guessed. The last class Jimena finally goes for David! This makes me happy!!! But, just when he stops hitting on her all the time and is not picking up any of her signals, thats when she decides she must have him. There is a word I learned down here pretty quick: histerico. Quite like the English version, hysterical. The men and women in dating relationship situations are absolutely histerico! It is so hot and cold. "You are amazing, I am going to write a song about you, so beautiful....blah, blah" and then no phone call. Then you decide "screw it" and move on, and then they casually text days later to go have dinner, but then if you try to get a time to meet the question is dodged. It is crazy. My phone is full of numbers of guys I meet and then forget about due to this absurd dating phenomenon. At one point men were asking for my number and I would laugh and explain to them my opinion of the histerico boys here and if they wanted to call me they must do so by a given hour the following day or I am deleting the number. I once had 3 phone calls lined up. Funny, with the "structure" if you will, they all called.
Anyways, they leave you hanging on a thread for as David is walking out the door it rings (the door bell) and there the class ends. Presumably it is his date that stood him up. This is the hook to buy the next level. So it ends without confirming that him and Jimena are meeting for a date.
To comment on my experiences with Bueno, entonces...I will definitely buy level two when it comes out, this has been an incredibly well done spanish class and I have learned so much. The humor is great, the overall style is well written, and David and Jimena both do an excellent job. The overall format is far superior to Rosetta Stone, and is cheaper. On top of it, they teach you so much about Argentine culture and even speak Argentine spanish. I have never even heard of a spanish program that uses the Argentine accent.
Things that I would like to see improved or added: One thing I love about Argentine culture is the use of hand gestures to accompany and add emphasis to what is being said. They should definitely use these in the video. Additionally, although they have support materials I would like more exercises to do at home after the lesson, I just end up re watching the lesson and do not really have anything to practice with other than following along and repeating everything they are saying. Finally - and I hope this doesn't seriously offend anyone down in the studio - but I can't stand the girls voice who introduces and summarizes every lesson. She has the typically valley girl voice and I don't think there is a person in the world who wants to hear that if they don't have to. So many times when I speak English in other countries and people hear I am from California, they always say "wow! you sure don't sound like a Californian, your accent is really different" and when I ask what they are used to I get a very bad impersonation of the typical "valley girl" accent. This is what much of the world thinks Californians sound like...WE DON'T!!! It is a small sampling! In short, they could really loose that intro.
Well, that is all. Thank you to the Buenos, entonces... staff for giving me this great oppourtunity to write about the program and to learn so much down here in the beautiful city of Buenos Aires!
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