Today I had my second Spanish lesson. One of my students agreed to help me with my Spanish, and today we met up as I had campo duty (basically keeping an eye on the kids playing up by the playground/soccer field). It's interesting learning Spanish from someone who is a native speaker and not a teacher, because I'm asking her about tenses, and she doesn't necessarily know what they mean, but when I give her examples she totally uses the "right" tenses, at least according to what I remember from high school. She's also more concerned with making sure I sound somewhat educated, and warning me about the ways that people "morph" the language...in other words, some of the ways they take shortcuts which makes it less understandable (dropping letters, etc). Our focus mostly is getting me to the point where I can get around Teguc or speak to people here who aren't bilingual in such a way that I am understood and I can understand them. There were many words I knew today, but some I didn't, and I will probably spend some time working on them. We talked through some common commands I would use as a teacher. The lessons are really random, but that's okay, because I'm learning things. That's all that's important, right. Right now the lessons are being run in English, but hopefully some time soon they'll switch to Spanish. I may ask her about that if it doesn't happen naturally in the next month or so.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to practice a bit of Spanish in the city. Wednesdays are half days, so I went to the city with a few people from the Ranch. I was helping move some furniture and cursory clean out a house that one of the students is moving into shortly. Afterwards we went out to dinner, and the parents I was with don't speak much English. Their oldest (a student of mine) was doing a lot of translating, but I decided a few times to go out on a limb and try speaking with them in Spanish, and I think they understood well enough...at least they said they did...so that made me feel good. Dinner was good, the company was good...but by time I got back home I was exhausted. There's something about a bone-jarring drive over dirt roads with questionable shocks that wears you out...and the saddest part is, I barely notice the drive anymore. I still get tired, but most of the way on the road, I don't notice it. Granted, I'm not quite to the point where I could fall asleep on the drive back, which some of the kids do, but it doesn't draw my attention any more. And it seems longer in the dark...partially because it's more difficult for me to track landmarks, since so many of my landmarks are too far away to see in the dark. I had fun...and that's what's important, right?
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