martes, 9 julio

Today in class we learned how to describe people and their personalities and then segueway'd into learning about imperfect. I've had pretérito and imperfect taught to me so many times and in so many ways, I understand it really well, even if it takes me awhile to think through it. We got homework for tonight, but that's only because we... went to el mercadillo! It's a market every Tuesday in Toledo. I roamed around with Jessica for about 20 minutes before we started to buy things. I got a few gifts, two children's fairytale books (which is really helpful to learn the grammar structures), some dulces (cream filled twizzler-like and a sugared gummy), and horchata. There were so many different types of venders and everything you could think of was sold there- jewelry, clothes (all kinds), kitchen ware, music, libros, dulces, bebidas, and a lot more. We were looking at some jewelry at a stall with about half of the girls from our class when all of a sudden they started to cover all of the jewelry with clothes. I was super confused because there were about 6 or 7 girls looking. We then all kind of looked at each other confused and when we turned around to move to the next stall we saw a pair of policemen coming around to all of the venders. We then speculated that the vendors either need a permit to sell particular things or that the items were either stolen or knockoffs. After that I was a little more particular about what I would buy. The vendors would shout out the prices to things and call the passer-bys 'guapo/a' which is approximately like saying either 'handsome man' or 'pretty women' to get attention. It was helpful when I didn't want to ask the price because then they assume you are going to buy it. For homework tonight we have to fill out a questionnaire about our time in the market, and finish the imperfecto worksheet; and if we want feedback on our speeches we also can turn in rough drafts tomorrow.

For lunch today we had cauliflower with spaghetti-style sauce. I'm not a huge fan of cauliflower but my host parents and younger sister were in the middle of an argument so I thought it would be better to keep my eyes on my plate and not make a sound. And following the Spanish tradition, you can never have enough food so for our second course we had chicken and then fruit for dessert. I then really needed my siesta. After siesta I headed to Plaza Zocodover to meet with some people to get tickets for Valencia. Olivia and I took the bus to the train station to get our tickets and the only train available leaves from Madrid at 2:10 which means we'll need to take the noon bus from Toledo. I will be voluntarily skipping a class (granted it's only the afternoon class) for the first time in my collegiate career- such a rebel. I will need to talk to Natalia, my professor, tomorrow to let her know.

In the evening I sat and did my homework. I pulled up youTube and listened to a playlist full of spanish songs and had a blast searching for new songs. I was able to do my worksheet on imperfecto fairly quickly and understood everything I was doing. The next worksheet I had to do was about the mercado this morning and I had to look up some definitions of a type of food that I still don't quite know what they are so I'll have to ask in the morning. It was fun to look back at everything we did and saw at the mercado this morning. For dinner I had another fried egg and fries and then went back to doing homework. I forgot how awful it is to write a speech regardless of the language.

Love you all!