|
|
Friday, January 19th, Badalona, Spain
|
Estoy estudiando mucho el español.
Cada dia voy a una clase en el centro de la ciudad por
cuatro horas . Es muy difícil peró soy muy feliz
di aprender eso idioma. Cuando viajamos por Sud
America, y en los Estados Unidos también, será muy útil.
All
my Spanish speaking friends can send in their
corrections by email!
I
just finished my first week of intensive Spanish
lessons. My head is full of new words. In
the first three days, I learned three different ways to
conjugate verbs in the past tense. In Spanish, you
use a different tense depending on whether you are
speaking of something that you used to do all the time,
or if you just did something once or twice during a
specified period of time, or if you usually or always do
the same things on Sundays, for example. That, and
trying to figure out if you should use estar,
ser or
haber to say "to be"
had me waking up in the middle of the night in a cold
sweat. The good thing is that I have the
opportunity to practice all of this outside of the
classroom on a daily basis. I'd say my chances of
really understanding it all are pretty good, if it
doesn't drive me crazy first!
I had
to go buy myself a watch. I get up at 7 and go to
the marina showers so I don't wake the kids up with the
noise of the water pump. By the time I get back to
the boat, Joe is usually up and the kids are just
beginning to stir. Breakfast, snacks for their
backpacks, coffee, hair brushing and all the typical
morning activities keep me running around until I leave
to catch the 8:25 bus to the train station. Joe
and the girls catch the next bus at 8:45 in the opposite
direction for school. After the short bus ride, I
have a five minute wait for the train, which is always
chock full of morning commuters. After the first
day I learned to take my jacket off before stepping into
the sweltering carriage. The doors open on the
opposite side of the car at the next stop and enough
people usually get off so that I can find a more
comfortable position to stand. Mine is the third
stop: Plaza Catalunya. It is a popular stop right
in the center of the city. I join the throngs of
workers shuffling up the stairs to their daily grind.
A short block and a half walk puts me at my destination
by 8:55.
My
classroom is on the fourth floor of the building and I
usually take the stairs. When we first went to
check out the school, we had a little trouble finding
the office, which is on the second floor. "In
Europe," I said self-assuredly, "the first floor is
actually called the ground floor so we have to go up
two flights of steps to get to the second floor."
We were a bit surprised to find no sign on the door and
even more surprised when there was no answer when we
rang the bell. Strange. I hopped into the
elevator and pushed the button for the second floor.
Up we went. Turns out they have a entry floor
and a ground floor in addition to the numbered
floors in this particular building. Hey, in
Catalunya, as I am learning, they do things their own
way!
I
have two different teachers. Maria José instructs
us for the first session, from 9 until 10:50 or so, and
Marta takes over at 11:10 until our lesson ends at 1.
There are five of us in the class this week. I am
the only American. There are two other women, one
Swiss and one from New Zealand, and two men, Danish and
Austrian. I took an online test and they placed me
in the low-intermediate class to start. I had to
play catch up to learn the simpler conjugations (present
and past perfect) that I missed in the earlier classes.
New students can begin classes every Monday so we might
get someone else joining us, although none are leaving.
I like both teachers very much. We start out by
talking about what we did after class the day before.
We use lots of past tenses in our conversation. We
only speak Spanish in class. If we don't
understand a word, it is explained in Spanish.
Some days are full of grammar but not all. It is
great to have someone who always corrects your mistakes.
Most friends I speak with don't do that.
After
school gets out, sometimes I have errands to run.
I'll go and buy a book or stop at the grocery store on
the way home. Joe came and met me twice this week.
We went out for a nice "menu del dia"
lunch and a walk along the beach. Today we had
lunch at one of the tapas bars in the Boqueria,
the central market just off Las Ramblas.
It is a real local experience. They don't have a
menu. You look at the various dishes on display
all around the counter and ask what they are and order
them up as you wish. It definitely pays to be a
regular. As we sat eating our meals, we saw dozens
of different dishes being prepared and served that we
had no idea were available. We kept asking about
this or that. "Next time...."
I try
to get my homework done before I leave to pick up the
girls at 4:30 or 4:45. I walk or take the bike to
school and we ride the bus home together. I know a
couple of the faces amongst the adults waiting to meet
their children and I smile and say hello and sometimes
have a bit more of a conversation. When they come
out of their classrooms, the girls are always full of
stories about their day. We weave our way through
the streets and sidewalks of Badalona which are full of
families just out of school, down to the BD7 bus stop.
The 5:20 bus drops us back at the marina at 5:30.
Dinner, showers, homework (not often), books and games
fill the time until the girls climb into bed around
8:45.
We
haven't had a routine of any sort in such a long time
that this is all new and exciting for us. The
girls continue to do well with their new school
situation. The teachers are all very happy to have
them there. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much
Catalán they are learning since I can't really speak it
with them. They had a field trip to the Picasso
museum on Wednesday. Juliana got an invite to a
birthday party next month. They met some friends
at the marina playground on Thursday night for a "play
date." It all seems pretty normal except when our
kids came home to go to bed, all the others were just
going out for dinner. LOL.
Big
weather is supposed to be moving our way from the north.
We are expecting one more unseasonably warm day tomorrow
before the temperature drops and the rain starts
falling. Hopefully the winds have mellowed on
their way here from England!
Have
a wonderful weekend. Send us an email and let us
know how you are doing.
XOXO
Christy, Joe, Cassie and Juliana
Next Entry
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Many thanks to our friend Craig Homenko for his assistance in setting up the website.
We also would like
to thank our buddy Scott Brunner who has been kind
enough to host the website on his server.
|
|
|
|
