Alright, I guess it’s time to be honest which is why I started this blog in the first place. I’ve been having trouble focusing on things as of late. Starting classes had disrupted my flow of working and now I’m realizing I need to take a step back and recalibrate. Since I started classes almost four weeks ago, I haven’t been writing (obviously) and I have been very unfocused. I think getting back into student mode has become quite a challenge. I never really realized that I spent most of my student years, really avoiding being a student. I got through school just fine and did just enough work to make it with decent grades. But right now I am in a situation that is meant to be completely for the love of learning and now I have to completely unravel the way I have been a student.
It is challenging to love everything about my classes though. I have my foundation Spanish class everyday of the week in an all women’s classroom. That was not planned, but it just worked out that way. I really like my classmates in the class and it turns out that two of them live really close to me. My teacher is young and it is her first time teaching. My classmates and I have an increasing frustration in terms of her teaching style. She is very rigid about her lesson planning, which means that if we have questions she won’t answer because she says it is not within the lesson. This means that there are basic grammar questions that lead to errors in the future. Because there were questions early on that went unanswered, now there are many more questions. She has become a bit frustrated with us and we with her.
We went on a field trip though, this last Friday and got to eat breakfast together and we took advantage of the casual setting to ask if she could spend the last 15 minutes of the class to answer the question from the day before, so she might have the chance to look for answers. Also, I feel like this class is a challenge, because it can be fairly boring. We just go through the exercises in the workbook for most of the class without any real lectures of what it is we need to be focusing on.
I have two elective classes as part of the program. My Redacción class is my favorite. The teacher is very dynamic and he explains grammar in a very engaging and effective way. My other class is called Narracción which is basically writing and reading conversation. This class is very boring. The teacher is very young and timid. Like he doesn’t really take control of the class. It’s always like, “Do you want to turn in the homework?” “Do you want to do the next assignment?” “Who wants to read this paragraph?” This might not be as frustrating if there was an extrovert in the class, but no we are all introverts that just stare at him, praying that he won’t pick us. But he has already figured out that I am an extroverted introvert, and he knows that I will read out loud or answer the question or actually speak.
That class usually goes something like this:
…silence…
Teacher: “How are you all?”
…awkward silence…more awkward silence…
I can’t take it anymore so, Me: “Good and you?”
Teacher: “Good…” “I suppose we will start on page 13…” Implicit question mark
…more awkward silence…
Teacher: “Start on exercise 3 with a partner.”
No one moves to work with each other… more silence
Teacher waits hoping that he won’t have to speak more
No one moves…
Teacher sighs: “ok, Tanya you work with so and so, you work with so and so…”
We shuffle to sit closer to our partner.
I wait for my partner to say something. She starts working on the assignment without saying anything. Do I break the silence? Are we actually supposed to do this in partners? Nah, I’ll wait until she says something. I’ll just start on it myself.
Then the teacher comes around and stands unusually close. “Are you two working together?”
Me in my head: “Does it look like it?!”; Me out loud: “Sí”, partner: Silence…
Teacher: “well you should have the same answer.”
Me glare at teacher in my head: “But it’s a writing exercise. Why do we need the same response when the exercise is to write a fictional story.” Me outloud: “Oh, ok. I didn’t understand the assignment.”
Teacher walks away. And now partner looks at me expectantly.
Me to partner: “Okaaay, how about…”; Partner: …silence, but nods…slightly
Teacher: “Who wants to read their story outloud?”
Class:…silence…
Everyone else: don’t make eye contact, don’t make eye contact. Me: put me out of my misery!!
Teacher: “Tanya, you can go first.”
And repeat! for an hour and a half twice a week. But yeah it’s totally fine…
The really interesting class that I am in is the night class also in Redacción. I like it because it is a challenge. I have to RUN to keep up because it is not a Spanish class. It is a class for Mexicans who want to improve their academic writing. Three of the six of us are working on their masters. They are hard core and the professor is a complete academic. He goes on tangents but they are always super interesting. It is always something literary or linguistic based since those are his specialties.
A very interesting discussion was about dictionaries. There has never been basically a Webster’s Dictionary for Spanish. Most Spanish dictionaries are quite useless. They don’t pick up on the nuances of the words. Many times, they will use the word you are looking up, in the definition. Example: tiento, definition: tentar. tiento is the noun, but the definition gives you the verb form of the word without any description or definition. He introduced the Maria Moliner dictionary. Maria Moliner was a woman, mother, and academic. She recognized the problem with Spanish dictionaries and in between her work and raising four children she set our to write an actually functional dictionary. They are two huge volumes, but with actual practical definitions that pick up on the nuances of the meanings of words.
Our teacher brought the two huge volumes to class and we all drooled over them. They are beautiful. We wanted them. After the discussion, the next class we all disclosed how we all looked for them and realized the price. Yolanda had looked for them at one of the nearby bookshops and found them for almost $2,000 pesos which is about $106 USD. Which I don’t know about you, but I who love ALL books, would have to think twice about spending that much to buy a dictionary. I know I will by the set eventually though because those would probably be the most useful $106 dollars spent.
Today, Saturday 25 March, Yolanda and I went to the Cineteca which is the national movie theater for indie movies and film festivals. We were going to see a free showing with live music of Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, but when we got there it started to rain and it was an outdoor event. We decided to get dinner. Then when we came back, the musicians were setting up inside and we got so excited and got a coffee to enjoy the music with. By the time we got our coffee and sat down, they played for two more minutes and then started packing up. Overall, a bit anticlimactic, but some great quality time with my sister.
Down below, I have added some pictures of my recent additions to my library. La Cocina de la Escritura is a book that I bought because my night class professor has spoken about it profusely because it is about the structure of Spanish writing, ironically written originally in French. I figured it wouldn't hurt and also it did not cost $106 dollars. The Principito has always been on my list to read. I see it everywhere now, and about a year and a half ago I had also bought the spanish audiobook. I tried listening to it, and it was successful at only putting me to sleep, now I hope to actually read/listen. I still have yet to get past the first two chapters.
Along with my distractions, I felt guilty about not having been reading, so I decided the cure for not reading the books I have is to buy another book. Of course! It makes total sense. But this time I decided not to buy a book because I should read it. I decided I needed a junk food reading book to get me over this reading road block. Junk food reading is how I like to describe the reading that is easy and fast to get through, with little to no intellectual nutrition, but still addicting. Some examples of junk food reading for me: A Throne of Glass series, The Hunger Games, Divergent, Twilight (early, stupid me). But I really have no desire to read a book originally written in English translated into Spanish. So I found a section in a bookstore which had a specific Hispanic Narratives section. I needed an original spanish language junk food reading kind of book.
I found it. It already has vampire in the title so I'm hoping I hit the jackpot of junk food reading books. In my experience, if there is vampire in the title or in the content, it is a pretty good guess that it can easily be consumed (i.e. Vampire Diaries, Vampire Academy, Twilight, Mortal Instruments). Granted, there are always exceptions (i.e. Dracula Obviously, Interview with a Vampire Still haven't read it, so I can't say aaand that's all I can think of for now). So, I'll take my chances with my first spanish junk food reading: El Vampire de la Calle Méjico. Thank you very much.
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