all eyes on me

Thursday night, a bunch of us went out to Momo...thought we were going to meet up with the Arabs since they were leaving this weekend but they never did end of coming around midnight. So I was the first one back since i had my internship Friday morn at the crack of dawn.

Friday: internship today...teddy was a no show...yikes! apparently it's a big deal. i had a hard time stayin awake whoops! not that that's any different from any other typical day tho.  during the last class of the day, Marisa (the math professor whom i follow to every class) tells her students to go talk to me since they had free time before the assembly thing.  AY DIOS MIOS...ALL EYES ON KELLY!!! Marisa had to specify to speak only spanish...no english because they love practicing English haha. it was craziness! i couldn't see past any of them.  all their elbows were on the desk, with their hands holding their chins up, ready to listen. they talked fast but luckily one of the girl got it and kept reminding her classmates to slow down cuz i needed it haha...didn't talk about much but it was fun : )

mi vida es una broma

ay dios mio! (p.s. i've been dying to use that frase as a header!) Boy do i have the story for you. today I was ALL over the place. no joke. the past 2 days i have been somewhere else during class. as in i pay attention and understand i just can't speak a word of spanish. just one of those days (or two).

today's classes

this morning i had my 2 favorite classes. comp and then civ with 2 of my fave profesoras. our classes are each an hour right. our second hour we spent the whole entire, yes the whole ENTIRE class talking about beer and coffee. maybe now i'll know how to order things with no questions! this is the culture tho so topic was well suited for our night out! Lola asked us during tapas what we learned and i don't think i've ever been able to repeat that well what i had learned in spanish. props to us : )

que chaos

i need to organize my life...major!

i don't know what day it is, which classes i have, who teaches what class, who is who, ay dios mio es muy complicado!

workouts: i need to start scheduling these asap cuz even though the food here is healthy i can tell i've gained a few cuz they like to feed me too much!!! and once this weather get s bit better and i have some good gym shoes shipped my way, yo ubet i'll be running las calles de Santiago!!!

Outside of class need to start learning spanish:on my own. so i have. my goal is to dramatically increase my vocab by the time i leave so every bit counts!!!

Dear Reader,

It gets harder to write in English day by day. English is not good for me. I am trying my best to not use English, but it's hard because blogging about my adventures is addicting (yes I know I've been slackin recently, my apologies) and I need to write so that ya'll can understand me. What a conundrum! I need to immerse (i think i can use this word) myself into ALL español in order to get the full effect and improve my speaking and writing. I am sorry if there are frases in Spanish that you don't understand. Sometime I don't even realize I am writing Spanish. In fact, the other day I went to write a blurb for homework and I didn't even realize I typed the word I needed without even thinking about it.  How cool?! I was thinking Spanish, YAY! Well, in order to maintain that thinking, and trust me, Spanish is a whole different thinking. It's hard to switch back and forth. You cannot think in English terms whatsoever. This amuses me to say the least. It means I am making progress. My poor English speaking and writing are good signs.  As one language goes up, the other, well apparently drops a bit. So when you see these things in my blog postings, you can just think to yourself, "Wow, Kelly, you are doing muy bien over there!" Wow, I don't think I've used English more simpler than this before, yikes! I have to say goodbye to English nonsense on my computer. As you may know, my facebook has been in Spanish for well over a few months now by advice from friends. Everything I do now, I want and need it to be in Spanish. It'll make or break me.  I know it will probably more than likely overwhelm me at times and I may break down once in awhile, but it needs to be done. My vow to talk only in Spanish unless I am completely lost and something strongly depends on mi understanding in its entirety stands. From this day forward, I your dearest friend, family member, and companion, promise to utilize la lengua español to the best my my abilities and speak only Spanish unless I'm really, at the point of death, struggling. But only then shall I Speak a little English until I understand; then Back to Spanish it is. (I feel like i just took my AP spanish pledge, my not as well thought out hmp). Blogging will be my only use English in addition to the previous stated. Ok. Enough of my rambling. I don't even know if any of that made any sense whatsoever.

Full immersion. Starts now. Goodbye English. Hola español.

My apologies for using Spanish terms that you may not understand. I will take it as a compliment : ) Oh and I will try to remember to toss the English translation in as well.

Yours truly,
mwuah

back to reality...spain is not a vacation

although while being in spain is a great opportunity to travel europe and well around spain too (and we have been!) the language is finally starting to hit me. today was hard but well worth it. pretty sure i was on the verge of tears i nclass today. (and this is why i hate that this blog is public...for these kind of comments i make) it was just stressful and i was anxious to be done particpating cuz for the life of me, today was just one of those days that i could not speak spanish

i just got back from mi empresa/practica (ugh i hate switching the spell check back and forth from spanish to english gahhh anywhoooo) and i need una siesta. me duele la cabeza. so much to take in! although it was hard and a lot, this is what i'm here for and this is what i want even if i complain that its hard. i didn't think it was going to be easy by any means. a deep part of me (idk if that makes sense hmmm) wants it this way cuz this is how i am going to learn. 

i have 20 more pages to read of the novel by Thursday but a group of us are meeting up at a cafe to read together. i like reading it on my own, but i'm going to go out anyway to hang out and just make sure i am understanding what's going on : )

ay dios mio

no puedo hablar una palabra es español hoy...pero ahora tengo mi clase favorita coolio

la república

me encanta noches del cine con mi familia española. i just wish movies didn't start SO late (10:30pm) oh well. sacrifice my sleep to get the spanish experience is what it's all about some times.

la cena típica

dinner is the least formal fo meals en mi casa. we sit and eat whie we watch the news. it's interesting cuz there's usually always something abut the US at some point but stuff that i would never ever pay attention to. idk if people from home even would care to know the stuff. i dunno. random.  but the spanish people don't know much at all about america except for like the "stereotypical american" i guess you could say. always on the run.

ay dios mio! most AWK dinner convo evaaa right now...was just asked how old i think Pura is...apparently she is 76? believable but she's more active than what i would picture a person that age in america. not going to get into details of this convo....ay dios mio! wish there was a word for "awkward" in spanish!

Vigo y el cine y tapas diario

Vigo 

El tercer fin de semana pasemos todo el sábado en Vigo. Llegamos muy temprano en la mañana (a las 8). Viajé en tren con Aimee, Olivia, Celina, Tessa, Tonya, Traci, Teddy, Samuel, Becky, y Alice a Vigo. Pasamos un tiempo bueno. Quisimos encontrar las playas pero no tuvimos éxito. Sin embargo, encontramos algunos puertos. Nos tomamos un descanso cerca del agua y disfrutamos del sol. Caminamos por la ciudad, fuimos de a compras (mucho), y más tarde, Traci, Teddy, Samuel, Tonya y yo encontramos un jardín muy bonito. Tonya y yo esperamos en un jardín mientras los otros fueron a explorar más. Mientras Tonya y yo hablaba más en inglés un poquito describiendo nuestra día, oímos a un hombre al lado de nosotros riendo. Pues, ha entendido nuestro inglés. Hablamos con él pero en inglés porque era de París y con su acento en español fue muy difícil entender una palabra. Cuando los otros volvieron, el hombre de París nos mostró lugares (baros) porque teníamos algún tiempo antes de llegar el tren. Entonces, fuimos de tapas y cervezas con nuestro amigo nuevo. Tomamos algunas bebidas y nos reímos. Pasé un buen tiempo en Vigo con mis amigos.

i've been here how many days...?

and just learned we have 2 bathrooms in this small house. i turned the water on to shower this morning but it lacked any and all sense of getting cooler...(as in warm. i call it getting cooler cuz it starts off at a freezing cold temp) or warm. so i didn't shower this morning. don't worry tho, i showered last night, so no biggie. i just didn't look my best today, that's all. during lunch, Pura explained to me i should shower downstairs when the weather is this cold because the warm water won't make it to the upstairs bathroom that i utilize. go figure, the only rooms i've been in are my room, what i thought was the only bathroom (would've saved me much trouble if i knew this earlier), the TV room (where we eat dinner while watching the news), and la cocina (aka the kitchen).

people have countdowns on how days we have left here...as in they wanna leave soon! que ridículo! when i see the countdown...my reaction: "i only have that much time to become fluent?!?! ahhhhh! necesito mas!" i don't get what's not to like about here. i came to learn the langauge and i intend to do so. i don't understand my fellow travelers at all!

my hobbies

i'm making spanish my hobby...this isn't a vacation altho the weekends are great for trips...i'm crackin down and reviewing my grammar and my goal is to learn 8 new words (on my own...so in addition to what i learn during the day) a day. sound like a lot? well by the time i leave i will have expanded my vocab

worst class evaaaa

is becoming better because i can now understand her better. she talks fast and with words i don't know, but i'm beginning to catch on. 2 hours of this every monday morning. but good news is after our descanso, tengo 2 horas de mi clase favorita!!! cultura y civilización : )

Vigo

Saturday (yesterday), the whole group from LC (plus Sam, the other american) spent the day Vigo. we hit up the stores on the main street and did a lot of walking as we always do on our day trips. Tonya and i wondered off for a while and met up with the rest of the group at one of the ports. the pictures are very misleading. yes, there's sol and blue skies but it was COLD!!! Traci, Teddy, Sam, Tonya, and I went exploring and found a beautiful garden which was quite a hike from la estación del tren  while Traci, Teddy, and Sam decided to continue climbing the never ending stairs, Tonya and i found a nice set of looking steps to chill on and talk about upcoming trips and probs embarrassing things if someone could understand English. well, just our luck. this guy has followed us up and was chillen at a bench near us and we sat there the whole time wondering if he could understand us or not. yep, he was def laughing at us. he def understood our english. we should've talked faster and maybe it would've sounded like jibberish like when spanish speakers speak so fast you can't decipher what they are saying. he was from Paris, France. we spoke english with him, cuz his spanish with his french accent was not spanish...that deserved a language of its own. after the others finally came back, we decided to go out for some drinks since people decided we were gonna wait spend literally the WHOLE day in Vigo (8:50 am tren to Vigo & 9pm back to Santi) so the guy from France showed us some bars as we made our way back in the direction of la estación del tren. i was tired, cold, had a cold, and the one estrella galicia threw me off a tad...i crashed as soon as my head hit my pillow.

i wake up every morning...

to the smell of Pura cooking something deliciously wonderful for lunch on Saturday afternoons...tortilla espanola mmmm