It’s nice to be settling into a daily schedule with classes and things. Every day I make a few new acquaintances; it’s nice to know a few local people in my classes. Also, most of my classes have a few other exchange students in them, so we all help each other stay caught up with notes/homework, etc. I also joined the choir last week! It meets from 8:00 – 10:00pm on Mondays. During warm-ups, the conductor said, “Oh I forgot – we have new members this week.” And so a couple of other students and myself got to stand up and introduce ourselves; it was the usual – name, major, where you’re from, why you joined the choir, etc. So, when it came to be my turn I said, “Hi, my name’s Gretchen and I’m from the United States…” and there was a communal, “Ooooooh!” from the other members. They were all really welcoming and they seemed excited to have another exchange student in the group. Plus, I get to help them pronounce all of the words in the English song we’re singing.
I’ve also started meeting once a week with a local guy for a tandem exchange. His name is Agustín, and he’s Murciano. He wants to learn English because a lot of his friends speak it and also it would be useful in his field of work as a civil engineer. It’s really fun! We meet up and chat for a few hours in a mixture of English and Spanish. We help each other when we don’t know the words for what we’re trying to say, and when we really just can’t understand each other, he as a notebook that we use to draw what we’re trying to say.
A few nights ago, my friend Makenzie and I went to see “Valor de la Ley” (True Grit) in the theater next to my apartment. Agustín told me that it’s the same theater he used to go to when he was growing up here. Anyway, the movie was really good – I was afraid I wouldn’t understand much of it because I’d heard that the English version had a lot of really old Western dialogue and I didn’t know if it would translate well. It’s not quite the same seeing Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon but not hearing their voices. “Cisne Negro” (Black Swan) is in the theaters here now, and my roommates and I really want to go see that because none of us had a chance to go to it before we left the States.
I’ve gotten my first couple of homework assignments over the past few days. One of them (for my Phraseology class) is more like a research project so we have 2 weeks to do that one. Compared to my schedule in the US, my schedule here is really laid back. I actually have free time! And I’m really perfecting the art of doing nothing, haha!
Hope all is well with everyone! Love you all -
P.S. - My roommates and I went hiking over the weekend, so I'll be posting a blog/photos of that soon!
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