Immersed in Spanish: Conversaciones en Espanol

The past couple of days have been quite interesting. My ability to really understand Spanish has grown by leaps and bounds. However, I am still trying to pry open the doors of my Spanish grammar background. My teacher yesterday kept asking, "¿Entiendes, Celeste?" I think at that point my eyes were wider than usual, and I was frantically flipping through the notes I had made the night before during my crash course on the indefinido and p. perfecto tenses (thank you Dorothy for lugging your computer to Spain)! I sat down with him after class and shared my concerns. He said that based on what I was saying in class, he thought I was doing fine. I'm still not so sure. I just kept thinking about our students that are in native speaker classes. I am in no way comparing myself to a native speaker, but there are many times when I am thinking about whether or not I am using the proper tense. When I speak in English, using the correct tense is the last thing on my mind because it is so natural. So I can see why some native speakers of both English, Spanish and I guess any language may have a hard time understanding the grammatical reasoning behind the language.

Only four of the eight students in my class were present today. Seems like my classmates probably partook in some of Spain's night life! We basically spent the entire day talking and doing very little grammar...which was fine with me! (Keep in mind this is coming from someone who has always enjoyed teaching grammar!) We conversed about quite a few things...the weather, traditional Spanish fans (the small hand-held fans that women use to keep themselves cool), futbol, flamenco, immigration, stereotypes, and vacations we have all taken. I found talking about immigration the most difficult as I was being asked most of the questions. My teacher has a huge interest in what is happening along the U.S./Mexican border and how Americans feel about immigration. This was beyond my everyday vocabulary, but I learned quite a bit. In only two days of classes I have two full pages of just vocabulary. Not sure when I will use mazorca de maiz "corn on the cob" with my students, but hey, you never know!

Overall I felt a lot better about where I am in the class, and the progress I am making. I will say though that I was a bit frustrated when I learned that one of the girls in my class who I thought had been studying Spanish for over 4 weeks, has only been in class for a week and a half! She has no prior schooling in Spanish! She is German and speaks: English, French, Italian, German (of course) and now Spanish. Pretty impressive! Well, we are not all naturals, but at least we are trying.

Después de clase, fuimos a El Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales. This still active monastery is very near Puerta del Sol which is in the heart of Madrid and not very far from our habitación. The tour guide was very fast in her explanation of the monastery so it was hard for me to keep up, but I was able to get bits and pieces. The art and religious relics in the monastery were in every nook and cranny. It was pretty amazing! I wish I could include pictures, but we were not allowed to take any.

Our day ended with a cultural class about Spanish wines at the school. I have to say that I was a little disappointed with the class as much of the discussion was about wine making and not so much about the different regions in Spain that are known for their wine. So in order to support the wine makers of Madrid, we had to stop at our little market and purchase a vino de Madrid wine. We decided on a vino tinto que se llama Puerta de Alcalá. It was quite tasty and paired very nicely with our dinner.

As we wrap up the day, we have just opened the balcony doors to our apartment to listen to a saxaphone player (yes, a saxaphone player) playing in the plazita outside our apartment.

There is so much I have to learn...tres semanas no da suficiente tiempo.