Rainy Day

Today was the first rainy day I’ve seen since I left California. It was so gloomy and siphoned all of my energy. Luckily my Spanish teacher realized he was not going to get anything out of us and ended class relatively early. We got a new Spanish teacher whom I really like. The rule is that we change Spanish teachers after four weeks, and I think it’s a good idea. I wouldn’t want to be stuck with a bad teacher or someone I didn’t get along well with for three whole months. This teacher seems to emphasize more grammar and actually corrects us when we speak. I like that. That’s what I constantly asked our old teacher for but he never did it. I told him almost every day that I needed more practice with preterit/imperfect and that I wanted him to correct me when I made mistakes so as not to create bad habits. He said he would but never did.

Today we also had our mid-cycle Spanish interview to see how our progress is going and to let our new teacher know what specifically each one of us needs to work on. Surprise, surprise I need to work on my preterit and imperfect. The interview was very uncomfortable. The lady that gave me the interview has a very critical demeanor and never seemed like she was pleased or satisfied with anything I said. I was under the impression that the interview would be more like a conversation; as that is the manor which we all speak day-to-day here in class and with our host families. But no, it was really an interview. She asked me questions and I responded, but there was no back and forth. That’s when I can really get into talking: if it’s a topic I’m interested in, know a little bit about, and can ask and answer questions and offer insights. I don’t think I did very well, and I also think it was a pretty poor evaluator of my actual Spanish level.

Yesterday I realized that the most delicious banana bread is sold right here around the corner from my house for Q1.75. It’s baked in my neighboring town (in which I had already bought a piece my first week here) and brought over here to sell. I don’t know if this discovery will be a good thing or a bad thing for me. It’s so cheap and so good, I can see myself eating one piece every day. I can’t tell how healthy it is, though. It’s really heavy, which either means they cook it with a lot of actual bananas or a lot of fat. I’m going to go with bananas because they’re a lot cheaper, and it also has a really rich banana-y flavor.

Also having to do with food, I finally got the guts to tell my host mother that I need more to eat for breakfast. Everybody else in the family is okay with a couple small pieces of bread dipped in sugared-up coffee…but I don’t drink coffee and I need more between the hours of 7am and 1pm (when lunch is typically served) to survive. I offered to make my own breakfast of eggs if they were available and she said okay. Now I’ll just have to figure out what to do if their aren’t any eggs. I also found out earlier that avocadoes sell for about Q6 per handful (5). So, that’s about US $0.10 per avocado. I could just eat one of those for breakfast and one for snack and be perfectly happy for my next two years here. I’ve just got to be careful with my avocado jokes or they’ll start lining up the suitors.