Estoy hasta las narices...

con los tiempos de los verbos!!! For those of you not familiar with Spanish sayings, or who perhaps literally translated the preceding as "I am up to the noses with the times of the verbs", the lovely (and unfortunately true) heading of this post translates to the English equivalent of "I am fed up with verb tenses!". Although, I will admit that being "up to your noses" with something is a slightly amusing though and can elicit a chuckle or two. Heh. :)

Anywho, third day of classes and I was frustrated! My comprehension of the grammar was like a roller coaster ride. First I was totally confused, then I got the next concept, then it was a free fall toward perplexity until class was over. See, the thing is that in the U.S. we don´t have grammar classes. Well, maybe some people did, but I for one, didn´t. I mean yes, I learned and know what verbs, and adjectives, and nouns are, and occationally I can identify what is modifying what and so on, but when was the last time you identified the conditional perfect for and English word? Yeah, it´s been a while if ever, eh? (An example of the conditional perfect in English, by the way, would be "I would have spoken")

Honestly, I have heard so many people say that Spanish is such an easy language to learn, which, I suppose, if you consider learning a couple words here and there and the basic present tense of how to say things as learning/knowing Spanish, then that could be a true statement. But when you get into the later levels where you discover tenses that you don´t even know the equivalent of in English, you get a little nervous. See, I have always just been taught English in that the way you say something is how you say it just because that´s the way it is. Now, I am having to learn the why of how you say things in Spanish. Itís not good enough just to know the answer anymore, you have to know why that is the correct answer. Ugh.

So yeah, it was a slightly frustrating 4 hours of class today. We are going over the indicative and subjunctive past tenses...14 different verb conjugations. Plus, we go so quickly that at times I felt overwhelmed. It should be alright though. I have already started thinking more before I speak, so that there is a better chance that when I say something it will come out correct and at the very least, I can say that I made a valiant attempt to construct a proper sentence! This is for sure not just a vacation in Spain-it´s hard work!

Along the same language tangent, it´s funny how the Spanish I know and have been taught differs slightly from the Spanish here. I mean the first and most obvious difference is the use of the "vosotros" form, which slowly but surely I am getting accustomed to. It´s kind of strange but it makes sense and actually sounds kinda cool. Feli sometimes comments to me that I also use a lot of words that are common in Mexico but not common here. For example, in Mexico I would use the word "platicar" (to chat) but here that is disctinctly Mexican. Here they would say "hablar" (to talk). It´s funny how it is the same basic language but with very slight differences.

In other not so academic news, I went and bought a banana today. True, it isn´t that earth-shattering of news, but it was kind of an interesting experience. There are tons of little fruterias along the street by where I live. It´s neat to be walking to school and pass by all the fresh fruit (though my favorite places to pass by in the morning are the bakeries because you can smell all the fresh bread!). I hadn´t gone into one until today when I finally broke down and bought a banana.

I should explain that I havenít had a banana since I left Oregon and even though we´ve had all sorts of good mandarins, oranges, apples, and pears at Feli´s, I have missed my fave fruit, the banana. I mean, how can you go wrong with the world´s most perfect food? Heh. So, I thought I would feed the craving.

Well, first off you don´t touch the fruit. There are signs (at all fruterias and in the markets as well, I learned) saying that you can´t touch the fruit. To a point, I can see why. I mean it is slightly unsanitary to walk into a store and pick out fruit that may have been touched by other shoppers, but then again, I am used to doing that so I thought it kind of odd that there was someone there specifically to help you get your fruit.

I wasn´t sure I´d be able to buy just one banana, but apparently it´s not that uncommon to just buy a small quantity since a lot of the people here go to the fruit store every day. What really surprised me though, was the price: .35 euro cents for one small, greenish, and slightly bruised banana. If we do the conversion, that comes out to be more than 35 U.S. cents for sure. You can buy a pound of bananas for what, oh 39 cents, 49 cents at the store at home? And this one small banana, which for sure didn´t weigh a pound, cost the equivalent of a pound back home? I was slightly disappointed and think I will stick to oranges and mandarins which are in season and consequently more reasonable. :)

Anywho, it´s still cold here. I am just glad that I´m not in Japan though. We´ve been watching the news and seeing how much snow they have been getting over there. Crazy. Apparently, we are entering the second year of drought here in southern Spain. It practically doesn´t rain here (very unlike Oregon!) and so that is part of the reason why people are so big on conserving water.

Along those lines, it´s interesting to see what they cover in the news here. You don´t hear a whole lot from the states, that´s for sure. I haven´t seen President Bush since I left. You do hear a lot of local Spanish news (obviously) from all over the country. There are also a lot of reports from other European countries and of course, lots of futbol news! There is a segment of the latest soccer news that lasts at least 10 minutes every newscast. Yesterday, we were watching the news and we saw that there was a big movie opening in Paris for Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek´s new movie. I asked Feli if Penelope was Spanish only to find out that Penelope Cruz is Felis cousin´s daughter. So that was kinda cool to find out-an indirect claim to fame. Nice.

I´m really looking forward to seeing a movie here soon. Memoirs of a Geisha opens tomorrow and since I didn´t get to see it in the states, I may have to take a field trip to the movies to check it out.

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Palabras del dia: ojos saltones=bug eyes
cursi=cheesy (as in "That´s so cheesy")
enanitos=dwarves