Today wasn't very exciting. Although, I was supposed to have Taller this morning for my cultural class, which is like art and whatever, and Rufi's usually the teacher, but he's not this week cuz of the schedule change or whatever. So my grammar teacher from last week was the teacher, and she didn't show up to class until ten minutes until the class ended which was highly annoying. I still had enough time between that and the break to make the card I wanted. We painted bookmarks. I'll most likely post a pic tomorrow, I don't feel like doing it today. So that happened. Then, in conversation we learned about lexicos which are lexicons. It's mostly for the people who are learning to be teachers but it's interesting to learn about as well. Just like vocab and associations or something. Not like word associations, but like I guess like teaching a word and then words that go with it. Then also like how some compound words or series of words that have one meaning where if you break it down, it makes no sense. But together they have a specific meaning. In English, the example I remember was brainstorm. If you try to break the word down, brain and storm, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But together, the single word they form means coming up with ideas. Then we played a synonym game, and my vocabulary skills are horrible. Not only was I unable to find synonyms for 90% of the words, for 80% of that 90%, I didn't even know what the word meant. I mean, there are a lot of words, including the 80%, that I hear a lot and recognize when I read, but I just don't know the meaning. I've been here 3 weeks and I just figured out at the beginning of this week what a simple word as "entonces" meant. I've heard it so many times by my teachers and classmates. But there are quite a few words that I know that other people don't. Like, the guy sitting next to me in literatura didn't know what "sustener" meant. (It means to support and maintain) Some of the newer students, especially this guy cuz he has an electronic dictionary) But some, not all, of the newer students look up like every word they don't know. I tried that in the first story, and I couldn't do it. I suppose I wasn't translating Spanish to English, but still there are a lot of words and you're not going to remember them all anyways. It's better to be like a child and just keep reading until you learn how to use the word. Some words that maybe will show up in a story more than once or I see in more than one story, I'll look up because it's obviously a common word in at least writing. Por ejemplo, "animo" (con accento encima del "a") was in two stories that we read this week, so I decided to look it up and it means like "espiritu" which is like a soul or spirit. I'm getting better at the reading. I don't know if it's because the stories are easier or if it's because I'm just getting better at reading or both. Either way, this is getting easier. Which is good. I don't think this is the class I'm supposed to be taking but either way my Spanish is improving. So, Wednesdays are 2-for-1 at the movies, so we were going to go to the Galeria with some friends to see The Karate Kid but I was so tired so Oyinna and I ended up taking naps. I slept longer than she did, lol. I didn't really want to see it anyways cuz I had seen it already and I wanted to watch Eclipse instead. However, (or Sin embargo, I need to practice that one cuz I always look it up, always hear and read it but never remember the meaning) I did want to spend time with friends. So, Oyinna and I ended up eating ice cream we bought yesterday and just hung out all day. I did my Pancho Villa homework. Oh, yeah, for conversation I had to write a paper about Pancho Villa. Interesting guy. Like his intentions, not sure about his methods. Whatever.
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