The choice between ECELA and Escuela Bellavista had to be made fast if I wanted to start on Monday but no one i met on my way thought enrolling on Friday for Monday to be weird at all. Apparently, I have New York time problems.
With a bip! card in hand, Eli led me to a bus and put me on it. This card is aptly named for the noise it makes when you swipe for entry. I was positive the bus was going in the wrong direction, and I was not just a confused tourist but in fact, 85% correct. But, by looking at the map, I determined the driver would have to turn around or go off a mountain in about 45 seconds. Luckily, he turned around and changed the display to show the direction I needed to go. An extended u-turn behind me, I headed for the city.
I transferred for the metro and tried to look local as I ran down about seven flights of stairs. Huffing and puffing my way onto line 1, I found the entrance and boarded the right train. I counted nine absurd school uniforms and three teens who looked like my middle school textbook. Let's forget the part where I couldn't figure out how to exit and butted into an unrelenting turnstile twice, before figuring out I was on the wrong side of the platform.
Thanks to the little blue dot on my map, I watched myself walk in the right direction and found school 1, ECELA. With the nicest website and most expensive pricing, Ecela also has an option to switch to a seaside school for a week, too. When I walked in I was underwhelmed by the slightly rundown facilities, complete with slanted pingpong table in front. I was greeted by a man who looked like my DiscoverSevilla boss Manu and three blonde young women with mediocre Spanish and really great workout attire.
Reminding me too much of study abroad dynamics, I felt like I was looking for less of a party and more of a community this time around.
I walked about a half mile away, hoping Escuela Bellavista could do me better. Lets just say they stole my heart completamente. Open coffee bars with snacks, cozy classrooms and a very international student list (3 Americans out of 30ish) - a better immersion environment where I didn't feel self-conscious. Two Asian women, Sim and Fiona, showed me around the building. Before he even knew who I was, the director brought me and the two assistants lemonade ice pops. He's a jolly bearded man who is the first person to ever tell me I have a good accent, after interviewing me.
Somewhere between the ice pop and the compliment, I was positive that these bright blue walls felt right. I spoke more fluidly and for longer than I have since my last breakfast with my Spanish host family. I had fewer frustrating moments than fluid moments, for a change.
I'm not the type to sign up for anything blindly - I've been vetting these websites and asking for reviews and talking to agencies for days. Free bar nights and beautiful Chilean men surely entice a certain audience to one school. Overall, the caliber of class at both schools is clearly top notch.
But, my intuition instantly told me which one was right. You can't do much better than that, Malcolm Gladwell told me so in Blink.
I took a ten-minute written test and had two ten-minute interviews and placed into the second-highest level, which is great (and where I thought I was) because I would've been nervous at the top. The program director happily chatted with me for additional 30 minutes. I'm trying to get used to having time to kill and killing it, off of Facebook and reality television.
Now, I have something concrete to aspire to for the next week: Nivel Avanzada. They tell me I'm close, and with a little brush up of tenses like pluscuamperfecto, I think Bellavista can get me there.
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