A Day in the Life

Today I had my first fourteen hour day.  My first class began at 8:45, an forty-five minutes North of where I live, and my internship ended at 8:30 at night.  So if you add in all my travel times: 14 hours.

I have three classes on Thursdays.  The first is a Spanish grammar, culture and vocabulary course.  It is similar to the Spanish courses at home. The second is my Spanish History course, in English.  The third is an Anthropology course.  That one is in Spanish.   During my first class, we talked about a Spanish type of music: La Copla. This is a style of song which is usually sang by a woman and is very dramatic.  Very Whitney Houston like, but in Spanish.  You can view one of them at the bottom of the page.  Warning, this one is not like Whitney Houston. During my history course we talked about how the Muslims conquered Spain between the 700s and the 1400s.  After my history course I have a two and a half hour break in which I do my homework and mentally prepare myself for my Spanish course.

Today I actually understood generally what we were talking about in the class's discussion about the text.  Last week when we talked about the author, I learned that he was an honorary member of the Seneca tribe and studied the Iroquois at length.  So, guess who gets to do a presentation on the Iroquois? Yeah, this girl.

What is easier to learn: Spanish when you speak English or English when you speak Spanish?

After talking to many people about this, here is the general consensus:  

Learning Spanish grammar is harder than learning English grammar because the verb changes whenever there is a different subject and there are many irregulars.  Learning English pronunciation is more difficult than Spanish pronunciation.  In Spanish, the pronunciation is what you see on the page normally.  But in English, half of the words do not look like they are pronounced.  Like the word colonel or choir. 

Grammar Note: Also in Spanish, they do not have contractions or really use the apostrophe.  To say "It is Halle's phone" in Spanish, the dierct translation would be: It is the phone of Halle.

A little Spanish history:

See that sign? It is all over Valencia. Way back during the Middle Ages, Valencia was part of the Christian Kingdom named Aragon.  That was the symbol of the kingdom.

When the Muslims were in Spain, they documented and preserved all of the knowledge from the Roman Empire.  Later, when the Christians controlled Spain, they translated  all of the information over to Latin.  Without either of these groups, we would know barely anything about the Roman Empire.

Fun Facts:

Every time I go to the metro station, I think about when Aunt Susan told us not to stand really close to the edge because some homeless guy might push us in.

Cats really can climb trees. I watched one stick to the middle of a tree trunk today.  I thought it was a squirrel.