And so, from first to last day of term in just 5 days. The day passed very comfortably – Pedro + I chatted for most of the time, about a great variety of things, tho’ we did a variety of exercises as well. I’m reasonably good at understanding written Spanish – I even manage to read full articles in the Grafico – but it’s when it comes to oral work that I’m really buggered. 2 things really – I try to translate with word to word accuracy, so get discouraged when I can’t, rather than trying to catch the general sense; + I tend to daydream, + so miss chunks. I also think my hearing is not all that it might be, so I don’t catch the words properly. Anyway, despite all this, I… we… think the week has been well worth-while, giving us an intellectual basis to our understanding of the language. I did raise a laugh in the school when I related my experience in the shop opposite, when I’d asked for jabon de pollo – that’s chicken soup – rather than jabon de polvo – soap powder. Ah well.
After school, we trotted back to the house, I stripped naked + got into bed, + Val, wearing as little as possible, took all our clothes to the launderette. I was a bit worried Val would be late, or get run over or something, leaving me naked, but in fact she was back in time for dinner.
In the evening, as per usual, we went to the Galeria. Had a really good time. Pedro plays guitar there, so we talked for a bit, + Chris turned up, so we were able to give him “Phineas Finn”, + show him the photos. We also got out the backgammon, + played a few games of that. It was really nice, just like being in a pub at home.
So, a reasonably good school report. Learning Spanish has been a positive, but I think we were just as pleased with the excuse it gave us to stay, make some friends, relax and enjoy just being there.
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