Mejor Español!

(A house near El Palacio de La Granja in San Ildefonso, Spain)

Sorry I didn't post yesterday.  I took a Benadryl and then pretty much passed out. . .

Yesterday I felt really good about my Spanish as several people told me I'm improving.  That's a relief - it's about time.  I also got back from classes early so I decided to go on a walk around Julia's neighborhood.  I walked down a street called Paseo de Habana, and then was slightly lost, but found Paseo de Castellana pretty easily, which is the main street in Madrid, so that took care of that.  I wandered past the soccer stadium at Santiago Bernabeu, mostly waiting to see if any lovely soccer players were wandering about, but I didn't see any likely candidates.  I wandered a little further towards central Madrid, but then had to turn around and come back for dinner.  Julia and I chatted for probably an hour and a half, so that was nice.  I found out she does a lot of knitting and cross-stitching, so I tried to bring up the subject of quilting.  But horror upon horror - there is no word for quilting in Spanish!!  I looked in my dictionary and online - I even showed her some pictures of mom's quilts from the website - nada!  Quite appalling!!

I was very proud of myself today because I helped a person with directions in Spanish.  As some of you may know, I am often lost.  But apparently, I look as though I know where I'm going, because I get asked for directions a lot, (people just don't understand the danger this might cause - I once sent some kids looking for "the Garden" to Boston Commons - whoops).  But today I was in the metro station and some fellow babbled at me in Spanish, but I caught enough words to know that he wanted to go to Sol.  I actually responded (in Spanish) with correct directions and he seemed to understand me.  Hence my being very proud of myself.

Also, my economics class was really interesting today.  The professor put five words up on the board (wind, cannons, property rights, climate, and diseases) and we had to figure out, in groups, why each of these words contributed to Europe's economic growth.  Now they weren't as simple as you would think, and it turned into quite the puzzle.  For example, the answer to the second riddle wasn't that Europe had good cannons and won wars.  It was that Europe knew that you needed a perfectly-sized cannon-ball for the cannon to work (too big, it explodes, too small, it just drops).  This technology led to the development of steam engine pistons (the pistons need to be the exact right size in order to work), and it was Europe's steam engines that fueled the Industrial Revolution.  Fascinating.  There was extra credit for the group that figured out the most, and my group tied with Germans.  Pretty darn good, I'd say.

And while "Beedle el Bardo," is slow going, I think it will help a lot with improving my Spanish.  For each story, I have to look up every other word the first time through, but the second time through is a lot easier.  Plus, by the end, I'll have quite a bit of magic vocabulary up my sleeve, so I'll be able to whip that out whenever needed. . .