flashcards

Overall, a good day. :-) Lunch was with Adolfo. We had soup … chicken, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes. My lunch also included a “tamal”, this one was different than the one I had the other night for dinner. It still tasted good, except there was a chile in the middle of it and even after taking it out, the spice of the chile was throughout the middle section of the tamal. Needless to say, my mouth was feeling it by the end. :-)

After lunch I went back to the school to check my e-mail (was waiting on a response from someone at work) and give chocolate and lifesavers to Marlene and her teacher Juan Carlos. My plan was to check my email and leave, walk to the post office, go to Café 2000 to test their internet to see if I could get through to my computer at work to help with prayer cards, and come home. However, I ended up staying at school until 5-ish, walking my boss through the steps to formatting a prayer card via instant messaging. In the process of that, I responded to a couple of emails and made friends with a new student Marlene met earlier.

Her name is Alexis (or Alexia, I honestly can’t remember right now) and she is from Australia. Her boyfriend wants to travel around Cuba and for her to join him, so she thought she’d take a break from work (in between jobs) and brush up on her Spanish beforehand. She’s here for three weeks and lives with a family who, incidentally, is not mine. Oh well.

She went to the salsa class with Marlene and afterwards she and I continued to talk and walk in the same direction towards our houses. We might walk to the post office together some time this week.

Tomorrow Marlene and I are going to walk down to the other school she found on Saturday and sign up to join their tour of Volcan de Pacaya on Thursday evening. I’m very excited about that. Turns out Alexis went on a tour of Pacaya Sunday evening. She said it’s a bit of a hike, but Adolfo says it shouldn’t be a problem for me. We’ll see. Hopefully I’ll get to see real flowing lava up close and personal. That will be way cool.

So after my wet walk home, I hung up my rain jacket and jeans to dry and began studying. I’ve learned well over 150 words/phrases this week, but couldn’t figure out the best way for me to study and retain them. I finally decided to make my own flash cards. In order to do so, I needed to borrow some scissors. I form the sentence with my trusty dictionary, practice it, and go out to the kitchen to ask … “Me dejas unas tijeras?” and Adolfo says, “Oh, prestas, si.” Turns out my verb, borrow, was the wrong one. I had a 50/50 chance, according to my “trusty” dictionary, and I, of course, chose the wrong one. Oh well. I learned.

I started on my project, but then it was time for dinner. Some tasty pasta and the green vegetable I can never remember the name of. Squash? Or zucchini? I think squash is yellow and zucchini is green? Ugh, I can’t remember. But it was green. And it tasted good, surprisingly enough. I think it was zucchini. Because I think that’s what Melissa and I eat at Musashis and I usually like it there just fine. This coming from a girl who wouldn’t touch a vegetable other than corn with a ten foot pole. :-)

This time, instead of Adolfo reading the prayer from the “bread box”, he asked me to do it. EEK! I was a little nervous, simply because it would be the first time I’d read anything real out loud. I guess I did ok. I didn’t understand any of the words, but I got to the end and we all said Amen.

I am talking more over meals with Adolfo and Anna. I try, anyway. Thankfully Adolfo speaks much more English than he gave himself credit for on the first day. Anna, on the other hand, really only speaks a tiny bit. He usually translates for both of us. :-) They both are really sweet people.

Flashcards are complete. Hopefully they’ll help me. I get so frustrated in class because Lesbia will ask me a question, of which I understand and know the answer, but I don’t know how to form the answer properly. Either that or my mind goes blank or my tongue gets tied and I just freeze up. I guess I don’t want to be wrong, so I get scared and would rather not say anything. I end up just sitting there looking like I’m thinking, which I am, but what she doesn’t know is that the answer is in my head. “En la casa!” But that’s not the “complete” answer. She wants me to say, “El libro esta en la casa” or something to that effect. The whole Esta, Es, and Son thing gets me really confused. UGH! So maybe this will help. I don’t know. I just know I’ve learned a lot of words that don’t’ really seem to help me communicate with people around here. Like who ever uses RABBIT???

Alexis asked me how long I was here for. When I told her she was surprised. I was too. Why the heck did I choose 10 weeks in such a foreign land learning a language that frustrates me every day????? She expected me to answer different to her question of traveling, as well, but nope, just here to learn and then will go home. It all made sense before I came here…