Tonight's lesson didn't start well. I turned up at Jaime's garage, as every other Tuesday evening, at 8.30. The look on his face followed by his exclamation of "Mierda" should have been a clue!
Oh yes, he'd forgotten all about our lesson and was just closing up the garage and heading off for drinks with a mate.
Magnanimously (I thought, having walked all the way there in 32 degrees with a heavy bag!) I said never mind, why don't we do it tomorrow evening instead?! Oh no, he said, I can't, I'm going out for dinner with 6 friends. We'd already established that we were cancelling Thursday's lesson, so it was looking like it was all over til September.
Until his mate, who was loitering around, asked why I didn't go with them for drinks! Jaime said yes as long as we had the class at the bar. Though he made me promise to let him speak quietly as he said he'd be embarrassed speaking English in public.
What the hell!
I can't pretend it was a roaring success. We probably did about half an hour of the class, regularly interrupted by the mate, who spoke no English but was very funny. In the end, Jaime gave up and said no more, please!
I let him off (the customer is always right), and we got more beer and more tapas.
Of course, once the class was over it was a free-for-all language-wise. It was pointless for me to keep plugging away in English so I took the opportunity for my first proper Spanish conversation! Went quite well, if you ask me! I understood pretty much everything they said and they were very patient while I looked odd words up in the dictionary. They politely ignored the fact that I can still only do the present tense!
What had started as a bit of a disaster turned into a very entertaining evening, all in all, and a very enjoyable learning curve!
Showing posts with label intercambio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label intercambio. Show all posts
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Language brain meltdown
My 3 days of Spanish classes are over. What did I learn? I learnt that it´s a long while since I tried to learn something!
Ana, the teacher, was great, very sweet, patient and extremely clear. There were only 2 of us in the class which meant it was very intensive (and intense!)
A lot of what we covered I kind of already knew, but only in a theoretical way that meant I could recognise it if I saw it written down, but wasn´t able to construct it from scratch.
Now I need to practice, practice, practice! I´ve been picking up every free Spanish paper I can find, and yesterday I bought El Pais. It took me a good couple of hours to read, and I was looking a lot of stuff up in the dictionary. But slowly, slowly it´s sinking in. I´m off to an intercambio tonight - same one I went to last Wednesday, but this week I´m determined to speak at least some Spanish!
I did manage to speak a little bit on Monday evening. I met up with Behram, another Vaughan dropout (!), in a great little bar near Sol. Within 10 minutes, a fellow student from his Spanish school had arrived, along with his mother. They were German so we spoke a mishmash of English, Spanish and German for a bit. Then Behram decided to talk to (I should really say chat up) the 2 girls sitting by us who were speaking Spanish but clearly weren´t natives. They turned out to be a German and a Polish girl, both somewhat the worse for several sangrias! Very friendly though, and for a couple of hours the 6 of us chatted in a bizarre combination of Spanish, English, German, Italian (the German guy´s mum spoke Italian, as does Behram) and some French! I think by the end of it we´d created a whole new language.
At midnight, Behram and I decided we needed pizza - obviously! Off we went to a tiny sidestreet with a little bar that did pizzas to share. Very tasty it was too. However, the evening - or should I say the morning - went a little downhill. First of all, an Indian guy had a pop at Behram basically for "not being Indian enough" or words to that effect. It clearly really got to him and as we were about to leave, he spotted a tiny mouse under the next table. Being the soppy, animal-friendly thing I am, and after a few too many beers, I went to pick it up. Far too easy. It was way too docile and I soon discovered that was because it had clearly been bitten just above one of its back legs. It was very weak and simply sat in my hand. I probably should have done the decent thing and put it out of its misery, but I simply couldn´t do it. I kept it with me, tucked it in my fleece pocket and got a cab home (at 4am after Behram and I had rather loudly sung a duet in the street!). Once in the house, I made it a little nest from a tupperware box, some kitchen roll and cotton wool. I put a tiny bottletop of water in the box, along with some bits of bread. I have to say that by this time it had rallied a little, was moving around and briefly looked interested in the food. Feeling quite optimistic, I went to brush my teeth, then went to check on it. Unfortunately, it was now an ex-mouse. Deceased. Ceased to be. Still, I like to think that I made its last few hours a little more bearable! I am such a sucker for anything small and furry (stop making up your own jokes).
Anyway, Easter weekend is nearly upon us. I have no plans! I move to my new place next Tuesday so I need to start sorting stuff out. But for now, I am free of any obligations and responsibilities. Better get on with practicing Spanish and STILL looking for a job!
Ana, the teacher, was great, very sweet, patient and extremely clear. There were only 2 of us in the class which meant it was very intensive (and intense!)
A lot of what we covered I kind of already knew, but only in a theoretical way that meant I could recognise it if I saw it written down, but wasn´t able to construct it from scratch.
Now I need to practice, practice, practice! I´ve been picking up every free Spanish paper I can find, and yesterday I bought El Pais. It took me a good couple of hours to read, and I was looking a lot of stuff up in the dictionary. But slowly, slowly it´s sinking in. I´m off to an intercambio tonight - same one I went to last Wednesday, but this week I´m determined to speak at least some Spanish!
I did manage to speak a little bit on Monday evening. I met up with Behram, another Vaughan dropout (!), in a great little bar near Sol. Within 10 minutes, a fellow student from his Spanish school had arrived, along with his mother. They were German so we spoke a mishmash of English, Spanish and German for a bit. Then Behram decided to talk to (I should really say chat up) the 2 girls sitting by us who were speaking Spanish but clearly weren´t natives. They turned out to be a German and a Polish girl, both somewhat the worse for several sangrias! Very friendly though, and for a couple of hours the 6 of us chatted in a bizarre combination of Spanish, English, German, Italian (the German guy´s mum spoke Italian, as does Behram) and some French! I think by the end of it we´d created a whole new language.
At midnight, Behram and I decided we needed pizza - obviously! Off we went to a tiny sidestreet with a little bar that did pizzas to share. Very tasty it was too. However, the evening - or should I say the morning - went a little downhill. First of all, an Indian guy had a pop at Behram basically for "not being Indian enough" or words to that effect. It clearly really got to him and as we were about to leave, he spotted a tiny mouse under the next table. Being the soppy, animal-friendly thing I am, and after a few too many beers, I went to pick it up. Far too easy. It was way too docile and I soon discovered that was because it had clearly been bitten just above one of its back legs. It was very weak and simply sat in my hand. I probably should have done the decent thing and put it out of its misery, but I simply couldn´t do it. I kept it with me, tucked it in my fleece pocket and got a cab home (at 4am after Behram and I had rather loudly sung a duet in the street!). Once in the house, I made it a little nest from a tupperware box, some kitchen roll and cotton wool. I put a tiny bottletop of water in the box, along with some bits of bread. I have to say that by this time it had rallied a little, was moving around and briefly looked interested in the food. Feeling quite optimistic, I went to brush my teeth, then went to check on it. Unfortunately, it was now an ex-mouse. Deceased. Ceased to be. Still, I like to think that I made its last few hours a little more bearable! I am such a sucker for anything small and furry (stop making up your own jokes).
Anyway, Easter weekend is nearly upon us. I have no plans! I move to my new place next Tuesday so I need to start sorting stuff out. But for now, I am free of any obligations and responsibilities. Better get on with practicing Spanish and STILL looking for a job!
Thursday, 2 April 2009
Batteries, beer, bare chests and breakfasts
OK, I admit, I may have been a little over-excited to finally get online on my laptop the other day. Not that I´ve managed to get a dongle or anything else but I did at least find a cafe within walking distance (10 blocks, but it´s exercise!) of the house, where I could use their free WiFi. Well, I say free - I spent over 5 Euros on breakfast in order to sit in there for an hour and a half. But it was good to be on my own computer at last, instead of the public ones I´ve been using. At least it meant I could email my CV (such as it is) to a few places.
I´m shocked at how short a time my laptop battery lasts though. I´ve played about with the power settings til I´m blue in the face and I´m pretty sure it understands that when it´s on battery power it´s meant to use the lowest amount of power possible. I don´t have any peripherals plugged in, I´m even trying to only have a couple of websites open at one time and yet, when I switch on it tells me I have something like 2hrs 45mins. Within 20 mins, it´s telling me I have an hour left, and then that hour runs out in about 40 minutes. It´s infuriating!
I realised last night, as I swigged my first beer of the day while I still had the hangover from the night before, that I haven´t actually had a day with no beer since I arrived! Oops. I´ve been pretty good food-wise - plenty of fresh veg in my fridge and I haven´t totally lived on patatas bravas and tortillas, but I have so got to stop drinking every single day. I sound like a complete alcy (is that actually a word?) now!! So for a couple of days those nice people at San Miguel / Cruzcampo / Mahou will have to live without my custom.
So yesterday I went to look at a room in a shared flat. A completely new experience as I´ve never shared before (well, yes, I shared with Sid but I already knew her!). I was a bit pessimistic as the only other place I´d looked at was dreadful - a poky little room with almost no light, in a dilapidated old building, no outside area and no internet access. This place was a revelation! A big, 3-bedroomed place, newly refurbished, beautifully decorated, comfortable room with loads of storage and huge windows, etc etc! At the moment there´s just one Irish girl living there, but there is also a double room still advertised to rent so it´s possible that at some point there may be 4 people living there. Still fine though the queue for the bathroom will be interesting! It also had a huge sunny balcony with a view of the mountains. But the piece de resistance was the fact that the fire brigade has a training school just round the corner and apparently, the firemen periodically run past the flat, bare-chested, on their way to the park for a training session. How could I possibly say no?! So I took it. I move there on April 14th for at least 2 months. If nothing else, the fact that I have rent and bills to pay should incite me to try harder for a job.
Last night, I went with Julie and Behram to a new bar in town which was meant to be having "international evening" and turned out to have a pair of hiphop freestyle guys testing out the PA in readiness for a gig next week. My idea of hell quite honestly, so after a couple of drinks we bailed and hit Cafe Madrid which has a huge intercambio every Wednesday evening. Really busy but good fun. Met some great people, chatted lots, got some good hints of places to go and convinced half the Spaniards that they´d missed a treat if they´d been to the UK and not gone to Brighton! I guess from my side of things it wasn´t exactly intercambio as I spoke almost only English all evening but I´m determined that once my 3 days of Spanish lessons are over next week, I´m going to start practicing. Having said that, I did spend 15 minutes speaking French!
Talking of practicing Spanish, this morning my 2 next door neighbours (2 very sweet guys) trapped me outside bringing my washing in and insisted on showing me round their respective houses. Not quite sure why though it was interesting to see just how small a space one person can live in. The house right next door to me is miniature! Like a little doll´s house! But then for the next 20 minutes they bombarded me with Spanish about anything and everything. House prices, South American Indian souvenirs hanging from the ceilings, the fact that I only need to knock if I need anything (would you believe, one of them actually said "...like a cup of sugar...." - I always thought that was a terribly English thing!) - for the most part I got the gist of what they were saying but not the nuances, and I pretty much said nothing back! Bless them, they tried to slow down but without the vocab, I didn´t really stand much hope. I think I´m wrong but at one point I´m sure one of them told me that the necklace he was wearing was not made from beads as it appeared, but from the dried dung of a very small South American animal that jumps really high! I smiled and nodded as much as possible but it must have been pretty clear I was lost!
So today is "doing stuff" day - nothing too exciting mind you. Recycling, clearing up (as my landlady is coming to stay at her own house tomorrow night!), writing out some ads to post for English teaching/conversation, and some relaxing in the sun which has thoughtfully come back.
AND NO BEER!
Hasta luego, everyone!
I´m shocked at how short a time my laptop battery lasts though. I´ve played about with the power settings til I´m blue in the face and I´m pretty sure it understands that when it´s on battery power it´s meant to use the lowest amount of power possible. I don´t have any peripherals plugged in, I´m even trying to only have a couple of websites open at one time and yet, when I switch on it tells me I have something like 2hrs 45mins. Within 20 mins, it´s telling me I have an hour left, and then that hour runs out in about 40 minutes. It´s infuriating!
I realised last night, as I swigged my first beer of the day while I still had the hangover from the night before, that I haven´t actually had a day with no beer since I arrived! Oops. I´ve been pretty good food-wise - plenty of fresh veg in my fridge and I haven´t totally lived on patatas bravas and tortillas, but I have so got to stop drinking every single day. I sound like a complete alcy (is that actually a word?) now!! So for a couple of days those nice people at San Miguel / Cruzcampo / Mahou will have to live without my custom.
So yesterday I went to look at a room in a shared flat. A completely new experience as I´ve never shared before (well, yes, I shared with Sid but I already knew her!). I was a bit pessimistic as the only other place I´d looked at was dreadful - a poky little room with almost no light, in a dilapidated old building, no outside area and no internet access. This place was a revelation! A big, 3-bedroomed place, newly refurbished, beautifully decorated, comfortable room with loads of storage and huge windows, etc etc! At the moment there´s just one Irish girl living there, but there is also a double room still advertised to rent so it´s possible that at some point there may be 4 people living there. Still fine though the queue for the bathroom will be interesting! It also had a huge sunny balcony with a view of the mountains. But the piece de resistance was the fact that the fire brigade has a training school just round the corner and apparently, the firemen periodically run past the flat, bare-chested, on their way to the park for a training session. How could I possibly say no?! So I took it. I move there on April 14th for at least 2 months. If nothing else, the fact that I have rent and bills to pay should incite me to try harder for a job.
Last night, I went with Julie and Behram to a new bar in town which was meant to be having "international evening" and turned out to have a pair of hiphop freestyle guys testing out the PA in readiness for a gig next week. My idea of hell quite honestly, so after a couple of drinks we bailed and hit Cafe Madrid which has a huge intercambio every Wednesday evening. Really busy but good fun. Met some great people, chatted lots, got some good hints of places to go and convinced half the Spaniards that they´d missed a treat if they´d been to the UK and not gone to Brighton! I guess from my side of things it wasn´t exactly intercambio as I spoke almost only English all evening but I´m determined that once my 3 days of Spanish lessons are over next week, I´m going to start practicing. Having said that, I did spend 15 minutes speaking French!
Talking of practicing Spanish, this morning my 2 next door neighbours (2 very sweet guys) trapped me outside bringing my washing in and insisted on showing me round their respective houses. Not quite sure why though it was interesting to see just how small a space one person can live in. The house right next door to me is miniature! Like a little doll´s house! But then for the next 20 minutes they bombarded me with Spanish about anything and everything. House prices, South American Indian souvenirs hanging from the ceilings, the fact that I only need to knock if I need anything (would you believe, one of them actually said "...like a cup of sugar...." - I always thought that was a terribly English thing!) - for the most part I got the gist of what they were saying but not the nuances, and I pretty much said nothing back! Bless them, they tried to slow down but without the vocab, I didn´t really stand much hope. I think I´m wrong but at one point I´m sure one of them told me that the necklace he was wearing was not made from beads as it appeared, but from the dried dung of a very small South American animal that jumps really high! I smiled and nodded as much as possible but it must have been pretty clear I was lost!
So today is "doing stuff" day - nothing too exciting mind you. Recycling, clearing up (as my landlady is coming to stay at her own house tomorrow night!), writing out some ads to post for English teaching/conversation, and some relaxing in the sun which has thoughtfully come back.
AND NO BEER!
Hasta luego, everyone!
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