really spain? - Blogabond

I have had intercambios galore lately and im loving it. Today the intercambio that I do with Erica, took us to a teteria in the Arabic part of town. His name is perry and he is my favorite intercambio. Hes something along the lines of erica’s host sister’s fiancé…or some weird connection like that. But hes studying to be a professor and in order to do that, he needs to pass an English exam. Usually with my intercambios I like it better when we are speaking Spanish because I learn so much, but with perry I like speaking English better. The first time we met with him he knew nearly zero English, it was so hard to understand him. We’ve been meeting at least twice a week since then and it is SO COOL to see how much he has improved. It’s a great feeling to hear him use words that we have taught him. He picks up on the language so quickly its crazy. Every once in a while ill hear him speak three straight sentences perfectly and if I passed him on the street and heard him speak those three sentences I would think he’s fluent. LOVE intercambios and I will be hunting for them in the states when I get back.
Fun fact: perry told us today that when you are with a group of people and then there is what we would call ‘an awkward silence’, in spain, they say an angel passed through the group of people. Que chulo, one of the reasons spain is so cool. Ha
I also learned today in class from my lit prof that English is the language with the most words. We have words that derive from just about every language, therefore our vocabulary is never ending…one of the hardest parts of learning Spanish for me is learning the vocabulary…no wonder English is so hard to learn…
Okay, dear spain, you are out of control, love taryn…
so yesterday was my first day out of the apartment in over a week due to my gripe a…because of this I missed a few exams, one being my culture exam. So I show up to class and we have a substitute who is SUPER guay (cool) and then all of a sudden he starts talking about the exam, so I told him I haven’t taken it yet..and he said oh really? And I said nope..and he said okay. And hands me the exam to take…he proceeds to go ahead and teach class. Full on discussion happening between 25 other students, while im sitting amongst them taking my exam. Our grade is based on the grades of two exams. It was no problem whatsoever for me to take my exam in the middle of class with him walking in and out of the class doing whatever he was doing. This would never happen in the states, ever. So weird to me. really spain??

off to AFRICA for the weekend! i really enjoy traveling...

written by

Taryn Hawkins on November 19, 2009 from Granada, Spain

from the travel blog: Granada

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Was it Tetería Boabdil near the river?

written by Tío Danny on November 25, 2009

that's interesting about taking your exam in the middle of a class discussion. I sort of like that casualness of that, did you?

written by teresa on December 15, 2009

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