Sunday, May 18, 2008

May 16th, I have my first Spanish/English lesson

I slept, read, and sweat today. So basically..only one significant thing happened today. Around 6 pm, I went with Ramido and Roberto to Felix's house. There, we would have our first English/Spanish lesson. Ramido and Roberto started with introductions, and common questions (where are you from, how old are you etc..) I was started on the same ones. Now..I know I'm not that awesome at speaking Spanish, but my 4 weeks here have done me justice, and I can get along with small talk and getting to know someone. I gratefully took Felix's lesson, and watched as Ramido and Roberto asked each other their new questions. Roberto consistently answered that he was either 2 or 99 years old, and that he was never born, therefore...wasn't from anyplace in particular. We packed up the three mini notebooks and pens that Roberto had bought for us, and walked back toward the center of town to get back to camp. I offered to buy everyone huge Horchatas, and as we enjoyed our tasty dessert like drink, Roberto said.."YEAH!!" and gave me a thumbs up. haha, his comprehention of the English language is pretty decent, it's just the conversation part he has a hard time with. We practiced slang phrases, more ridiculous phrases about our age, and then just settled back to using Spanish. Ramido had to ride home to his wife and children, so Roberto and I walked back to camp. He asked why I hadn't practice my Spanish as much. I told it was hard for me to do it with so many new people around. He understood and felt the same way. We talked about the ATVs, riding out in the morning, and why I hadn't gone with them as much. I would answer to the best of my ability but was pleased to find that Roberto really wanted to help me. He would slip in the correct conjugation of verbs, I would repeat and then we would just move on. No one has done that with me.
My friendship with Roberto is awesome. He has a really similar sense of humor and can always tell when I'm B.Sing and don't actually know whats going on. Then he'll sit down and try and get through to me whats going on. He'll try a ton of different words for the same word until he finds one I actually understand. He's a good friend, and I know I'll owe a good portion of my Spanish speaking to him by the time I leave.

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