It seems that Sunday night is usually a good night for writing something lengthy for my blog (and doing some other stuff, too).
Anyhow. This week I've been really busy, or rather busier than before. Classes started this week, of course, so I've had homework. That involved asking my Central American dad about lots of peculiar sayings that are used here (like "when frogs grow hair," which is along the lines of "when pigs fly"). And going over present-tense verbs umpteen times in grammar class (kinda boring). And reading three chapters in an apparently rather famous book called "Pantalones largos." And writing a nine-minute speech in Spanish. Yeah! I was sooo proud of myself when I finished that thing! And all that was only for two of my classes.
The third class, touching upon the culture and civilization of my host country, meets only on Fridays and is a pretty interactive, field-trip-based class. Which means it's awesome! We went downtown this past Friday, to see the national theatre and the original post office building and the central market and the artisan's market and the big downtown Catholic church. I just finished reading the info sheet with history/context of all those. But the experience was way more interesting--we got to taste some special cinnamon-flavored ice cream and some things called churros which are kind of like cinnamon sticks but have something really sweet in the middle. (How's that for a run-on sentence?) And the artisan's market! We're going back there sometime.
And so ended the official week, and the weekend began. That started with a picnic on Saturday morning, during which I actually played kickboll and soccer, and got extremely sunburnt (although not as bad as the one time I only put on one layer of sunscreen for two and a half hours on a Pacific beach a few years ago). And we walked around the lagoon in the park where we were, and of course ate food. I also tasted some weird ice-pop-like thing while at the picnic. I don't know what it was called, but it was just like an ice-pop except the blue one tasted like bubble gum and they were all thicker (like frozen jello, maybe).
Then, last night I watched an important soccer game. Well, sorta. What I mostly did was play euchre and talk (we did try playing euchre in Spanish, and got as far as knowing that
triunfa = trump
matar = to trump
baso = suit
diamantes, corazones, pomos, and somethingsomethingelseIcan'tremember = diamonds, hearts, clubs, and spades (at least I think pomos was clubs).
Impressive, no? Oh and we just called the bowers the "right" and "left"and dispensed with trying to figure out "bower."
And I'm not done! Today was a philharmonic concert downtown, so we took taxis to the theatre and spent two blissful hours listening to movie music accompanied by movie highlights (think a mini version of "The Polar Express," which was one of the movies). And by blissful, I mean fantastically heavenly and immensely enjoyable.
So, enough for one weekend. I did learn today about a really interesting little tradition in my host country. You take a threaded sewing needle and dangle it over somebody's hand till it barely touches, enough so it kinda bounces off the hand. Then you watch to see whether it swings back and forth, around and around, or doesn't swing at all. Basically you do this again and again until you do get it not to swing at all. Each time it keeps swinging back-and-forth equals one boy; each time it's swinging around and around equals one girl; and the time it doesn't swing means there are no more. You do this to determine how many children you will have, in what order and of what gender. Fascinating, isn't it?
Anyhow. This week I've been really busy, or rather busier than before. Classes started this week, of course, so I've had homework. That involved asking my Central American dad about lots of peculiar sayings that are used here (like "when frogs grow hair," which is along the lines of "when pigs fly"). And going over present-tense verbs umpteen times in grammar class (kinda boring). And reading three chapters in an apparently rather famous book called "Pantalones largos." And writing a nine-minute speech in Spanish. Yeah! I was sooo proud of myself when I finished that thing! And all that was only for two of my classes.
The third class, touching upon the culture and civilization of my host country, meets only on Fridays and is a pretty interactive, field-trip-based class. Which means it's awesome! We went downtown this past Friday, to see the national theatre and the original post office building and the central market and the artisan's market and the big downtown Catholic church. I just finished reading the info sheet with history/context of all those. But the experience was way more interesting--we got to taste some special cinnamon-flavored ice cream and some things called churros which are kind of like cinnamon sticks but have something really sweet in the middle. (How's that for a run-on sentence?) And the artisan's market! We're going back there sometime.
And so ended the official week, and the weekend began. That started with a picnic on Saturday morning, during which I actually played kickboll and soccer, and got extremely sunburnt (although not as bad as the one time I only put on one layer of sunscreen for two and a half hours on a Pacific beach a few years ago). And we walked around the lagoon in the park where we were, and of course ate food. I also tasted some weird ice-pop-like thing while at the picnic. I don't know what it was called, but it was just like an ice-pop except the blue one tasted like bubble gum and they were all thicker (like frozen jello, maybe).
Then, last night I watched an important soccer game. Well, sorta. What I mostly did was play euchre and talk (we did try playing euchre in Spanish, and got as far as knowing that
triunfa = trump
matar = to trump
baso = suit
diamantes, corazones, pomos, and somethingsomethingelseIcan'tremember = diamonds, hearts, clubs, and spades (at least I think pomos was clubs).
Impressive, no? Oh and we just called the bowers the "right" and "left"and dispensed with trying to figure out "bower."
And I'm not done! Today was a philharmonic concert downtown, so we took taxis to the theatre and spent two blissful hours listening to movie music accompanied by movie highlights (think a mini version of "The Polar Express," which was one of the movies). And by blissful, I mean fantastically heavenly and immensely enjoyable.
So, enough for one weekend. I did learn today about a really interesting little tradition in my host country. You take a threaded sewing needle and dangle it over somebody's hand till it barely touches, enough so it kinda bounces off the hand. Then you watch to see whether it swings back and forth, around and around, or doesn't swing at all. Basically you do this again and again until you do get it not to swing at all. Each time it keeps swinging back-and-forth equals one boy; each time it's swinging around and around equals one girl; and the time it doesn't swing means there are no more. You do this to determine how many children you will have, in what order and of what gender. Fascinating, isn't it?
Comments