Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

Of course the icky weather from Grand Forks decides to follow me to Spain. Go figure. It's 44 degrees right now in the middle of the afternoon. (Fahrenheit. I gave up on learning Celsius and just put the Avila weather app on my desktop of my computer in Fahrenheit, so when I get up in the morning I can plan for my day. Watching the news at night and having them say it'll be 10 degrees doesn't help me much.) Because it's so chilly outside, it's pretty chilly inside the houses and the school. It has been raining on/off all day too. Luckily I got a ride with my mom to school so I didn't need to walk in it, and on my walk home, it was just misting so I didn't need to use my umbrella. Today was my first day walking home by myself from school and I did it without getting lost or turned around at all!

Classes were about the same today. In my conversation/composition class, we went over the homework/writings we did last night and read them out loud, and then did some more grammar work. At the moment we're just reviewing some basic grammar concepts, but she said it'll get harder from here. I really like that class and I love the profesora. She is so cute. During one of the breaks, she was asking us if we have been able to talk with our family and friends back home at all. We said yeah, mostly through email or some people have been using Facetime or Skype, but we don't really use our phones. I was trying to explain that I have a blog I use to keep people at home updated, and I was pretty sure the Spanish word for it is also blog. She didn't understand what I was talking about so I was trying to explain it as a diary that I keep on a website to reflect on my days, add photos, etc. The spanish word for diary is "diario," but I accidentally said it with an 'a' sound at the end instead of an 'o'. So it sounded like the Spanish word for diarrhea instead of for diary. She gave me a really strange look and then I realized what I said and was like AHHH NO NO NO and then we laughed and eventually figured out what I was talking about. The Spanish word is blog, like I thought. I just didn't say the 'o' sound in the word right. Whoops! Just one of my awkward language barrier moment. There have definitely been a few.

Then I went to the cultures of Spain class. I'm experimenting with my classes/schedule a little bit, because the two classes I wanted to take here are at the exact same time, so I can't take those two and need to pick one to do and then also do a different one. Confusing, but anyways I'm working that out. So I went to the culture class today and it was kind of intense actually! The teacher was lecturing on all (and I mean ALL) of the provinces and regions of Spain and their capitals. It was a LOT of material in one sitting, especially without having any background knowledge of Spain at all. Just imagine trying to have every single US State, some info about it, and its capital explained to you in one 1-hour sitting. SO much info.

After classes a group of us went to the computer lab and were trying to figure out plane tickets/hostels for our long weekend. We have one four day weekend we are given to travel, and so we are trying to decide where to go, how to get there, and where to stay. We really wanted to go to London, but the plane tickets were jumping in price by the minutes, and so we are still debating where exactly we want to go, but we are getting it figured out. We have a day trip with our group to Segovia this weekend, so that'll be really fun. I came home from school then and ate a really yummy lunch. Marta was home from school today because she still wasn't feeling well, but when I got here she was feeling much better. She sat by me and showed me her sticker books. She loves stickers and has tons and tons of them in books. Many of them are of characters I know, like the Disney princesses, Hello Kitty, Mickey and Friends, Pooh, and Spongebob. It's so cute because they have different names here, and some of them are so literally translated. Like the Disney princesses. Snow White is "blanca nieva" which literally means white snow. Same with Sleeping Beauty. And Eeyore and Tigger from Winnie the Pooh are called "burro" and "tigre" which are the words for donkey and tiger. And SpongeBob is Bob Esponja, probably my favorite translation. It was fun to look at all of her stickers because she has so many. We'd go through and she'd tell me what they are in in Spanish and then ask me what some of them are called in English. I learned some fun new words and she did too. She has a traditional Spanish game she and her mom want to teach me when Marta is feeling a little better. I'm excited to learn how to play. It's still kind of rainy/misty, so I probably won't do anything too exciting the rest of the day. Just hang out with my family and do my homework.

Enjoy your super hot weather back home! Luckies...

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