Friday, October 27, 2006

paso a paso

hola amigos, como estan? the title of this blog is what my house mother says to me every time i get frustrated with my spanish...step by step. at least i think that is what it means, well i know that is what it means by i am not sure that is how it is spelled. well, another week or so gone by...definitely settling into things now. last weekend a few of us went and hiked up a smaller volcano nearby that has a supposedly spectacular lake in the crater which you can hike down into. trust our luck though, we hiked directly into a cloud and could not see the lake until it was literally at our feet. however, it was really nice to get out and do something after all of the studying that we do. the next day was great too...we had heard of some steam rooms up the mountain in town here and so set out to see if we could find them. they were really nice...natural steam from inside the mountain combined with fresh eucalyptus leaves on the floor. once again i apologise for the lack of photos...there's big pressure though! lol, just kidding. however, i do have a few photos and plan on having quite a few more after this weekend's excursions around and about, so i will try and post some on monday or tuesday. this week i changed teachers. my new teacher's name is lucky, pronounced loocky, and she is great. really thorough and structured. i am sure that is now how everyone would want to learn spanish however for me it is working better than gabriel's quite laidback approach. plus, gabriel and i get along a lot better at home when we don't have to stare at each other for five hours everyday while we both get frustrated. lucky also has a panderia, which is a bakery, so i went there for class on thursday because her 12 yr. old daughter couldn't be there for the morning. it was really fun...i got to help her put all the bread out and see how much work she does before and after she usually comes to teach. it's insane. most of the customers who come in do so everyday too, so lucky refers to them more as clients than customers. they were all very interested in meeting me and valiantly attempted conversation.
a whole bunch of students left last week, including amy, who lived in our house. she had a much nicer room than i, so i also changed rooms after she left this week. i have my own door outside now and do not have to tramp through the kitchen and past miriam's bedroom everytime i come home late.
i talked to gabriel today about how much longer he thinks i should teach for and he says that i should do what i initially intended to do (six weeks) and then think about whether i want to do more or not. in other words, he told me to stop thinking about it. i actually think that is quite good advice, as simple as it sounds. so, it's at least three more weeks of this for me and hopefully a whole lot more spanish! people keep telling me that there is some kind of moment when the fog lifts somewhat and the words aren't so painful coming out...i can only hope they are not just trying to make me feel better and that it is somewhat true.
here's to that and my non-existent halloween costume for tonight's party and the school,
mer

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home