It´s here, that time you´ve all been waiting for with bated breath--
KATHERINE´S BLOG UPDATE!
(Shush, I´m not really that egocentric. :-) )
I´ll begin with a response to the lovely comments that people left (because you know how I love comments). I am indeed learning vosotros (with some difficulty, but pretty much everyone else in the program is in the same boat because teachers hate vosotros) The accent here is pretty strong, too, and the first few days were a bit difficult, but it´s much better now. D´s in the middle of a word are really quiet, and the soft c´s and z´s (but not s´s) are pronounced like the "th" in "thorn." My mother corrects me whenever I don´t use the accent, so I´ve picked it up pretty quickly and I´m the only one in the program who uses it regularly (because Taylor is still resisting.)
Also, it is papas fritas in everywhere but Spain, and I still try to say papas fritas, but papa isn´t a word here. Also, there are all sorts of funky Spanish words, like peach is durazno, but in Spain it´s "melocotón" (very fun to say.) Speaking of cool words, I learned... I think the first day in the program that the word for intoxicated is borrachado, and the word for a drunk person is borracho. This was because I was describing Gay Wellington to someone in conjunction with my interest in theatre. Finally, I´m accruing mothers at a phenomenal pace-- I now have my American mother, a Spanish one, Casey, and Emily! I feel very loved. :)
Okay, anyway, all the technical descriptions of Spanish are over, and I shall commence with experiences. AH, but one more thing: I forgot my camera cable again this week, and I think it´s a cosmic signal that the pictures are not meant to be... until my return to the United States. (Oh, and I tried photobucket-- no dice. I´m fairly sure it´s a problem stemming from a lack of compatibility of computer and camera, because I´m getting the same message from different computers and different websites. It works fine on my home computer, so...)
Okay, where to begin? We went to a city named Gijón on Friday, and it´s right on the coast, meaning that after viewing all the anchient architecture (reaching back to single-digit centuries), we got to go to the beach. Fortunately, it was one of those rare days in Asturias that it wasn´t raining (the weather here is very depressing), and I swam in the sea. (Oh, in addition to the ancient architecture we saw a sculpture whose name translates into something like "the beautiful horizon thing"... but the more common name is "La Báter de King Kong", or "King Kong´s Toilet," because when you stand in the center of it, it sounds like a toilet flushing.
That Sunday, I returned with my Taylor, my mother and her best friend, Rosa and we had a delightful time in the market of Gijon with inexpensive but very cool clothing, shoes, dresses, sunglasses, bags, towel sets-- you name it. Later we had a picnic and it was excellent.
Backing up to Saturday night, we (same group as Gijon) went to a huge celebration in another suburb of Oviedo, complete with rides like the Fun Frolic, kiosks of stuff, and a band... and lots of sidra. Sidra is an alcoholic drink charactic of Asturias, and I´m fairly sure it´s like hard apple cider. The interesting thing is that it comes in a bottle and to drink it, one has to pour the sidra from above one´s head into a cup held as low as possible. Hmm, I have a feeling that was most confusing-- google sidra and I´m sure you´ll find something if you´re interested. Anyway, it was funny to look above the heads of the crowd and see green bottles sticking out the top of the mass of people.
Monday night, Mamá, Taylor and I went to an event in Lugones (our suburb of Oviedo). In this particluar festival, a celebration of the day of San Juan, a huge bonfire is lit in the center of town and peole write down their wishes on a scrap of paper. They then crumple up the paper and toss it into the fire, in hopes that a few of the wishes will come true in the next year. I think there should be something like it in the United States. (Besides little bits of paper, students will often burn the textbooks of courses that gave them tons of trouble during the school year... Hehehehehehe...)
However, life here is not all fun and parties. Classes are truly difficult, and there´s a lot of homework to do-- I spend an average of about an hour and a half to two hours doing "deberes" each night, most of which is literature. You know how the little stories and things in Ven Conmigo/Nueva Vistas (the school´s Spanish textbooks) are short and easy? And have vocabulary sheets and little footnotes for the words not on the vocabulary sheets? Well, there are no footnotes nor vocabulary sheets in the poems and the short stories and the excerpts of books we´ve read, and they are not selected to be easy. Good for vocabulary, though, and the other day I bought a book from which we read an excerpt in class. It´s a mystery/thriller novel called La Tabla de Flandes, and I´m four pages in. Very interesting, if slow for me to read. I´m learning tons in the classes, though-- there´s no busywork involved in the homework.
In my after school activity, theatre, I am overacting like crazy and tripping on my Spanish lines and it´s fun. There are some weird parallels between this and doing a play in Shakespeare-- the language barrier is exactly the same, except instead of Old English, it´s Old Spanish (La Cueva de Salamanca by Cervantes, author of Don Quijote). It´s getting better all the time, though... the lines are soaking into my brain and there´s that same experience of not having to think about them, just having them flow out my mouth... and it´s really cool when it´s Spanish.
Spanish is getting better and faster and I´m pronouncing things better... I think my English is getting accordingly worse. Psh, English is for wimps! (ella dice, escribiendo en Inglés...)
Until next week, with more broken English than ever,
Katherine
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Hello again, everyone!
I loved reading the comments, thank you for those!
Now, first of all (well, I suppose second) I hate Flickr. It´s only letting me upload pictures from my camera one picture at a time, which, when you have 200 pictures to upload, just won´t fly. SO-- I´m going to post pictures to the blog and I think that´ll have to be it until I can get back to the EE UU (AAAH Spanish: Estados Unidos) and post my mountains of pictures (many of which are pictures of mountains).
This week I went to a buuuunch of places in Asturias. Friday was our first excursion. We went to a town called Conga de Onis (I think), which was celebrating its patron saint´s day (San Antonio). As a result, there were people everywhere in traditional costumes, there were bagpipes (or gaitas, as they´re called in Spanish) As another result, there were a bunch of drunk people. Combine the two, and we had drunk people in traditional garb stumbling all over the place, laughing their heads off, and it was really ridiculously funny. Please remind me never to get drunk in public. (Kidding, Mom!)
We also went to Picas de Europa, (Peaks of Europe), which was a collection of mountains, one of which we drove up and it amounted to an incredible view. People (including myself) had others take pictures of them with the beautiful mountains in the background-- what a contrast to all the cheesy school photos with landscapes on the photographer´s backdrop. Our next stop were three famous lakes of Asturias, but it was extremely cloudy so we could only see the lowest one.
Finally, we went to Covadonga. Firstly, a bit of history... During the first part of the 8th century, the Muslims were conquering Spain. They started from the south and in a period of about 10 years, they´d worked their way all the way up to Asturias (very North of Spain). In 722, they started on Asturias, but were stopped by a man named Pelayo. Legend has it that a woman appeared in a cave at the battle site to aid Pelayo: the Virgin of Covadonga. In the cave today, there´s a little chapel and a statue of her, and it´s a holy place for Asturians-- if something really good happens, many will go visit the Virgin of Covadonga in thanks. So anyway, we visited the cave and it was quite interesting.
Over the weekend, I visited a bunch of sea towns with my family, and there are some beaaaaautiful photos from that. On Sunday, we were on the beach and we played Uno for an hour on the rocks while waves of the Cantabrean Sea (is that right in English? I only know the Spanish name, geography whizz that I am :D) crashed onto shore.
AAGH my hour´s up, I´m going to have to be more efficient with photos next week, and there are still experiences from this week to recount. I think photos are a losing proposition here...
Love to all! (leave more comments)
Katherine
P.S.: I´m getting my daily serving of vegetables.
P.P.S.: And by vegetables I mean patatas fritas. I´ll just leave the translation to you. It´s especially good because my parents don´t speak Spanish. :)
I loved reading the comments, thank you for those!
Now, first of all (well, I suppose second) I hate Flickr. It´s only letting me upload pictures from my camera one picture at a time, which, when you have 200 pictures to upload, just won´t fly. SO-- I´m going to post pictures to the blog and I think that´ll have to be it until I can get back to the EE UU (AAAH Spanish: Estados Unidos) and post my mountains of pictures (many of which are pictures of mountains).
This week I went to a buuuunch of places in Asturias. Friday was our first excursion. We went to a town called Conga de Onis (I think), which was celebrating its patron saint´s day (San Antonio). As a result, there were people everywhere in traditional costumes, there were bagpipes (or gaitas, as they´re called in Spanish) As another result, there were a bunch of drunk people. Combine the two, and we had drunk people in traditional garb stumbling all over the place, laughing their heads off, and it was really ridiculously funny. Please remind me never to get drunk in public. (Kidding, Mom!)
We also went to Picas de Europa, (Peaks of Europe), which was a collection of mountains, one of which we drove up and it amounted to an incredible view. People (including myself) had others take pictures of them with the beautiful mountains in the background-- what a contrast to all the cheesy school photos with landscapes on the photographer´s backdrop. Our next stop were three famous lakes of Asturias, but it was extremely cloudy so we could only see the lowest one.
Finally, we went to Covadonga. Firstly, a bit of history... During the first part of the 8th century, the Muslims were conquering Spain. They started from the south and in a period of about 10 years, they´d worked their way all the way up to Asturias (very North of Spain). In 722, they started on Asturias, but were stopped by a man named Pelayo. Legend has it that a woman appeared in a cave at the battle site to aid Pelayo: the Virgin of Covadonga. In the cave today, there´s a little chapel and a statue of her, and it´s a holy place for Asturians-- if something really good happens, many will go visit the Virgin of Covadonga in thanks. So anyway, we visited the cave and it was quite interesting.
Over the weekend, I visited a bunch of sea towns with my family, and there are some beaaaaautiful photos from that. On Sunday, we were on the beach and we played Uno for an hour on the rocks while waves of the Cantabrean Sea (is that right in English? I only know the Spanish name, geography whizz that I am :D) crashed onto shore.
AAGH my hour´s up, I´m going to have to be more efficient with photos next week, and there are still experiences from this week to recount. I think photos are a losing proposition here...
Love to all! (leave more comments)
Katherine
P.S.: I´m getting my daily serving of vegetables.
P.P.S.: And by vegetables I mean patatas fritas. I´ll just leave the translation to you. It´s especially good because my parents don´t speak Spanish. :)
Picture catchup!
The center of town-- there´s a market really near here as well. See the colors?
Meet ¨La Gorda¨. I´m fairly sure that she´s actually supposed to be a statue representing-called maternity, but it´s like the Bean in Chicago... nobody calls it the ¨Cloud Gate¨.
Lots of influences from the United States have made it here, and the cleanliness and organization are very important to the people of Spain. (My house? Clean clean clean clean clean.)
The stairs of death. You can see the top part of el Seminario at the top. (The place where we have classes.)
This isn´t from last week, but it´s a better picture than the one I was going to post. It´s my host mother (Maria Josè, or Mamà to me) and my housemate (Taylor).
Seeing is believing, eh? And there was another one in the mall!! What is the connection between yarn and lingerie here!?
My friend Zach. He has the honor of having his picture posted because doesn´t he look like Phil Lentz!? I don´t know if it´s just me or what, but on the plane I kept seeing him out of the corner of my eye and having a jolt-- hey, it´s Phil! Wait a minute... But they act the same and they have the same laugh and it´s really unnerving.
I took this picture on the bus ride from the airport in Madrid to Oviedo. I don´t know where it is, but it sure is pretty. (And I will have you all note that I took this photo through the window of a bus moving at over 50 mph, and I didn´t have a window seat. ...let´s just not mention the 50 other pictures I took that didn´t turn out well, shall we?)
This is the cathedral of Oviedo, and it´s one of the most popular things for Oviedo publicity pictures (complete with lots of postcards.)Okay, that´s all for now!
Thursday, June 12, 2008
First Week
Hi everyone, I don´t have much time and therefore there may be typos galore and all that. Also, I FORGOT my camera cable, so the pictures will have to wait until next week... AAAARGH. I´m in an internet cafe at last after finding the one on which we originally planned closed... yeah. And if my writing seems strange, it´s because my brain has been thinking in Spanish and in Spanish language patterns for four days...
Firstly, my host family is a woman with three grown daughters who now live in Madrid, and so only her and another (very nice) student are in the house. "Mamá"is AMAZING and lovely and excellent. She´s an incredible cook and she´s a good teacher... she knows the meaning of "speak slower, please", and she explains words that we don´t understand. I´ve learned soooooooo much from her. Plus, we visited her mother mother, and her mother is a master knitter. I described a pattern for felted slippers to her. (To my American mother and Carla: they´re the magic Peter Pan slippers.)
Also, I´ve gotten to know most of the other students in the program, and I have a few good friends amonst them (if I hadn´t forgotten my camera cable, I could upload pictures right about now...) There´s a guy who looks and acts a LOT like Phil Lentz-- on the plane it was really weird because I´d see him out of the corner of my eye and think "Oh! Phil! Oh wait... " Anyway, pictures next week.
Classes just started in earnest, and they´re also really good, although I absolutely fail at grammar. I speak, and I make a mistake. Speak, mistake. Speak, mistake. No fun! In the class of conversation today, we did a round robin that involved Britney Spears talking to a giraffe, which then was carried away by a giant bird. Yeah, there are some crazy (good crazy) people in the program. :)
Spain´s culture actually isn´t as different as I thought it would be. They´re simultaneously more formal and more open-- in the U.S., if you´re in a good mood and you just randomly smile at someone in the street, they´ll smile back. Here, if you randomly smile at someone in the streeet, they look at you like you´re crazy. However, with people you know, there´s a much smaller "bubble" of personal space, and people greet each other with cheek-kisses. That´s pretty much the only thing that´s given me pause-- all the rest is just a little different.
For example, the food. Actually, it´s more like THE FOOD!!! It´s absolutely amazing, and there´s a ton of it. My Spanish mother is like Mrs. Weasley-- I say that I´m full, that I can´t possibly eat any more, and she tries to offer me more or yogurt or cookies or something. It´s the same when we eat at school-- there´s so much excellent food that you just want to eat but can´t! I was also going to talk about the dryer that my Spanish mother has, but I think that´ll have to wait until I have pictures because it´s something that you just have to see.
It´s interesting, because a lot is the same as well. I have to take the train to school every day and in the station, there´s always American music playing... one day there was Thriller, and Evanescence seems to be quite popular. Right now there´s a song by Avril Lavigne playing, and my Spanish mother has a documentary about Michael Jackson. Also, there are Spanish versions of American brands of things in the grocery store-- like Dannon (yogurt) is called "Danone" and there´s a line of products called "Don Limpio" (Mr. Clean)
Oviedo itself is absolutely beautiful-- the streets are an explosion of bright colors on all sides; the buildings are much more cheerful here than in the United States. There are mountains on the outskirts of Oviedo, and it´s all very scenic. The school building is at the top of a massive hill (we have to climb a billion stairs to get to it every day), and there´s an incredible view out of its windows, with the cathedral and the town spread out below and mountains in the background. (Again, CAMERA CALBE-- next week.)
Interesting things about the town include something in the central plaza that everyone calls "La Gorda", which means "The Fat"... it´s a shiny black statue of an enormously fat woman and her baby. Also, the bells that ring the hour don´t "toll"-- they ring out the anthem of Asturias (the province that Oviedo is capital of) every hour. It´s excellent. Also, during a walking tour we took of Oviedo, we passed a store called "Lanas-Corseteria," which means "Yarn-Underwear Store". I kid you not, there were lots of colorful balls of yarn in the window-- alongside a bunch of lingerie.
Next week I will have PICTURES (you have no idea how mad at myself I am right now)... But I want to end on a positive note, so here it is: It´s incredible how much better I´ve gotten at Spanish. After only four days, I understand about twice as much (people speak with a heavy accent here and VERY quickly) and I´m thinking in Spanish. My brain is getting used to putting together the words into correct grammar patterns, (you have to reverse word order a lot in Spanish as compared to English), and verb conjugations are becoming much easier and much quicker. Plus, I´ve learned many many words and I´m quite happy.
¡Adiós hasta la semana que viene!
Firstly, my host family is a woman with three grown daughters who now live in Madrid, and so only her and another (very nice) student are in the house. "Mamá"is AMAZING and lovely and excellent. She´s an incredible cook and she´s a good teacher... she knows the meaning of "speak slower, please", and she explains words that we don´t understand. I´ve learned soooooooo much from her. Plus, we visited her mother mother, and her mother is a master knitter. I described a pattern for felted slippers to her. (To my American mother and Carla: they´re the magic Peter Pan slippers.)
Also, I´ve gotten to know most of the other students in the program, and I have a few good friends amonst them (if I hadn´t forgotten my camera cable, I could upload pictures right about now...) There´s a guy who looks and acts a LOT like Phil Lentz-- on the plane it was really weird because I´d see him out of the corner of my eye and think "Oh! Phil! Oh wait... " Anyway, pictures next week.
Classes just started in earnest, and they´re also really good, although I absolutely fail at grammar. I speak, and I make a mistake. Speak, mistake. Speak, mistake. No fun! In the class of conversation today, we did a round robin that involved Britney Spears talking to a giraffe, which then was carried away by a giant bird. Yeah, there are some crazy (good crazy) people in the program. :)
Spain´s culture actually isn´t as different as I thought it would be. They´re simultaneously more formal and more open-- in the U.S., if you´re in a good mood and you just randomly smile at someone in the street, they´ll smile back. Here, if you randomly smile at someone in the streeet, they look at you like you´re crazy. However, with people you know, there´s a much smaller "bubble" of personal space, and people greet each other with cheek-kisses. That´s pretty much the only thing that´s given me pause-- all the rest is just a little different.
For example, the food. Actually, it´s more like THE FOOD!!! It´s absolutely amazing, and there´s a ton of it. My Spanish mother is like Mrs. Weasley-- I say that I´m full, that I can´t possibly eat any more, and she tries to offer me more or yogurt or cookies or something. It´s the same when we eat at school-- there´s so much excellent food that you just want to eat but can´t! I was also going to talk about the dryer that my Spanish mother has, but I think that´ll have to wait until I have pictures because it´s something that you just have to see.
It´s interesting, because a lot is the same as well. I have to take the train to school every day and in the station, there´s always American music playing... one day there was Thriller, and Evanescence seems to be quite popular. Right now there´s a song by Avril Lavigne playing, and my Spanish mother has a documentary about Michael Jackson. Also, there are Spanish versions of American brands of things in the grocery store-- like Dannon (yogurt) is called "Danone" and there´s a line of products called "Don Limpio" (Mr. Clean)
Oviedo itself is absolutely beautiful-- the streets are an explosion of bright colors on all sides; the buildings are much more cheerful here than in the United States. There are mountains on the outskirts of Oviedo, and it´s all very scenic. The school building is at the top of a massive hill (we have to climb a billion stairs to get to it every day), and there´s an incredible view out of its windows, with the cathedral and the town spread out below and mountains in the background. (Again, CAMERA CALBE-- next week.)
Interesting things about the town include something in the central plaza that everyone calls "La Gorda", which means "The Fat"... it´s a shiny black statue of an enormously fat woman and her baby. Also, the bells that ring the hour don´t "toll"-- they ring out the anthem of Asturias (the province that Oviedo is capital of) every hour. It´s excellent. Also, during a walking tour we took of Oviedo, we passed a store called "Lanas-Corseteria," which means "Yarn-Underwear Store". I kid you not, there were lots of colorful balls of yarn in the window-- alongside a bunch of lingerie.
Next week I will have PICTURES (you have no idea how mad at myself I am right now)... But I want to end on a positive note, so here it is: It´s incredible how much better I´ve gotten at Spanish. After only four days, I understand about twice as much (people speak with a heavy accent here and VERY quickly) and I´m thinking in Spanish. My brain is getting used to putting together the words into correct grammar patterns, (you have to reverse word order a lot in Spanish as compared to English), and verb conjugations are becoming much easier and much quicker. Plus, I´ve learned many many words and I´m quite happy.
¡Adiós hasta la semana que viene!
Monday, June 2, 2008
Introduction
Hi everyone,
This summer I'll be in Oviedo, Spain for seven weeks with the immersion IU Honors Program in Foreign Languages, which draws from Indiana high school students going into junior and senior year. The program sends thirty students to each of eight cities across the globe: one in Germany, two in France, one in Mexico, and four in Spain. While in the program, I'll live with a host family, go to classes in culture, literature, conversation, grammar, and phonetics, and speak no English. (Read more about the program here.)
I only get an hour a week on the internet so that I'm not looking at English too often. This means I'm not going to have time to email everyone individually-- and here's where this blog comes in. Every week, I'll post about what's going on with pictures. Everyone should definitely leave comments, especially about news of life (remember I won't have time to respond to all of them, though...) I've set it so that people without blogger accounts can leave comments (just sign your name so I know who you are, because it'll say "anonymous" on the comment.)
ALSO, since Blogger's photo-uploading function is cumbersome and slow, I'll only put a few pictures I take up here and upload all the rest to flickr.com, account kmcdaniel001. Once I have a few pictures, I'll give a direct link to the photo album.
Finally, to test out Blogger's photo-uploading function, I'm going to upload a photo from Science Olympiad Nationals. I'm not quite sure what category of people this is, but it's a good picture, so:
Thanks, everyone! Next post will (probably) be from Spain!!
This summer I'll be in Oviedo, Spain for seven weeks with the immersion IU Honors Program in Foreign Languages, which draws from Indiana high school students going into junior and senior year. The program sends thirty students to each of eight cities across the globe: one in Germany, two in France, one in Mexico, and four in Spain. While in the program, I'll live with a host family, go to classes in culture, literature, conversation, grammar, and phonetics, and speak no English. (Read more about the program here.)
I only get an hour a week on the internet so that I'm not looking at English too often. This means I'm not going to have time to email everyone individually-- and here's where this blog comes in. Every week, I'll post about what's going on with pictures. Everyone should definitely leave comments, especially about news of life (remember I won't have time to respond to all of them, though...) I've set it so that people without blogger accounts can leave comments (just sign your name so I know who you are, because it'll say "anonymous" on the comment.)
ALSO, since Blogger's photo-uploading function is cumbersome and slow, I'll only put a few pictures I take up here and upload all the rest to flickr.com, account kmcdaniel001. Once I have a few pictures, I'll give a direct link to the photo album.
Finally, to test out Blogger's photo-uploading function, I'm going to upload a photo from Science Olympiad Nationals. I'm not quite sure what category of people this is, but it's a good picture, so:
Thanks, everyone! Next post will (probably) be from Spain!!
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