Last night we went to a Flamenco sectaula. It was hosted at on of the peña here is town. Peña is a private flemanco club and bar. On Thurdsay nioghts they open to the public for a fee (about $8). At 10 a talk on culture starts and then singing, guitar, and dancing follows. The talk is about 30 min long and in Spanish. Most of the forieners don´t wantto hear the talk and just want the flemanco. The poor speaker was having all sorts of problems with the slide projector. Many forieners talked through much of the talk and some clapped when the slide project stuck, in hopes of making it be the end of the talk. The rude folks were “shhh”ed many times. I am sure the Spaniards were thinking “What a bunch of rude American tourist.” The only thing was the folks who were rude at my table weren´t americans.
Minus a few rude people the night was awesome. The two gitaristas were amazing. I was just blown away. The dancing was really nice. I don´t know enough about flamenco to tell good from bad, so asked one of my friends who is a dancer at intermition, “So, was she any good?” I don´t know. The singing was ok, but I could take it or leave it. It had nothing to do with the singer himself, it is just they type of singing. It sound like yelling in tune.
Unspectacular suckiness One of the other students comment on how she thought that after class the teachers must get together and talk about how bad we are. Upon reflection I conculded this can´t be the case because our inabiblity to speak the lauguage or dance the dance is unremarkable. Every two weeks a new group of people show up who are just as bad as us.
It is a differnt language I am having to learn a new language, and I am not talking about Spanish. I am having to learn Spanish of Spain, not the Spanish of South America I have a small grasp on. It is like the differnece between speaking English and speaking American. Not only are mnay of the words differnet the pronucation is completely differnt. For example hace (you have) in Ecuador would be pronounced “ha – say” while here it is pronounced “ah – thay”. They don´t use the 3rd person her much, while in Ecuador they almost always used the 3rd, but never the 2nd. It is a new laugage. In the end I will speak nothing well (not even english).
Laundry I did laundery yesterday on the rooftop tarest of our flat. I was very disipointed when I went to move my cloths from the washer to the drive and noticed it was not a drier, but another washing machine. It was raining so line drying was not an opption. My room became the laundry room.
Class I have moved up to level 2 in the classes, which was a good move. I have much fewer words than everyone else, but I am learning new stuff. Today I started to finally get my barings and talked quite a bit in class. In practicing one of our verb tenses we did the game were we could only ask yes no question. The situation was this. A man wakes up in a panic, runs up stairs, looks out the window and comitts suicide. Why? Not only did I figure it out. I was able to ask the right questions. I am getting there slowly.
Others need the computer here at school. PAX!

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