We are coming to the end of our month long stay in Oaxaca and we are speaking better (or is that more betterer?) and understanding more when spoken to however it doesn’t take much from a native speaker before we are totally lost. I am worried that our upcoming time in Costa Rica will negate the advances we have made in Oaxaca.
Darcie and I have been in school all day every day except weekends making a hearty effort to get functional with our Spanish. There are days where we seem to advance and days when we seem to regress: there is no logic that I can see to the advance/regress relationship.
We get about 2 hours of homework every day and 4 on the weekends. Sometimes the work is a help and sometimes it is demoralizing as you realize how little you know. For instance this weekend we were assigned a two page (8.5”x11”) or so short story which had so many words that weren’t in our dictionaries or did not make sense when translated literally that our heads were spinning.
Darcie took 3 hours or so with the help of a friend who is substantially further along the path than we are and even then there were words left untouched! I gave up after 30 minutes with the first paragraph as every third word needed the dictionary or several online sources to glean the meaning. I admit that some of the following paragraphs were easier but I was so frustrated that I had no interest in beating myself up. And it was only two pages!!!
Despite this we are having fun every day and have met a lot of wonderful people in our classes. We have not met many locals which is unfortunate but inevitable given our schedule.
We move on to Costa Rica on Feb 2, leaving from Mexico City at 6:45am. We are currently intending to spend two months in CR before flying down to Peru.
Some Advice for Nick and Darcie....
ReplyDeleteTwo New Zealanders were bungee-jumping one day.
The first said to his mate, "You know, we could make a lot of money running our own bungee-jumping service in Mexico"
The second Kiwi thinks this is a great idea, so the two pooled their money to buy everything they needed: a tower, an elastic cord, insurance.
They travelled to a small town in Mexico and began to set up their tower in the square. Local people came out to watch them at work. When the tower was complete, the two mates climbed to the top to begin testing prior to opening for business. By this time their was an large, exuberant and expectant crowd.
The first Kiwi jumped. He bounced at the end of the cord. As he came back up, his friend noticed that he had a few cuts and scratches. Unfortunately, he was unable to catch him and he fell again.
The second time he bounced back, he was bruised and bleeding. Again, his mate missed him.
He managed to recover him on the third return. By this time the tester has a some broken bones and is almost unconscious.
The first Kiwi was most concerned, “What happened bro? Was the cord too long?”
“No the cord was fine,” gasped his mate, “but what the **** is a piñata?”
That was Cosma (in case you did not guess!!!)
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