Beginning of week 3

Yesss! We’re half-way through classes. My linguistics exam was so easy that it was almost a joke. I actually could have probably given that test to my high school students. Yet, surprisingly, many people thought it was hard. I can’t understand that, especially since he told us EVERYTHING, and I mean everything that was going to be on the test. It’s just basically comparing English grammar with Spanish grammar, but it’s mostly Spanish, which is why I don’t understand why people don’t get it. This is the stuff we teach to our students. You should know what a past perfect subjunctive verb is or what a present perfect progressive indicative verb is, right? Can anyone give me examples in Spanish or English? Anyway, my second exam wasn’t so great. It was the literature one. I actually think I did pretty terrible because I didn’t know the answers to some of the questions. But it turns out that everybody in the class thought that they did poorly because it was so hard, so I don’t feel so bad. The culture exam was also kind of a joke. He gave us 15 minutes to take it. He had a list of really broad topics that we had talked about in class, and we had to choose one and write about it, using only the lines he had drawn on the paper…no more than that. We were able to use our notes, so I just copied down exactly what I had in my notes.

After that last exam, Rigoberta Menchu came to talk to us. She’s kind of a big deal in Guatemala, and she came with body guards and all. She won the Nobel Peace Prize, and ran for president in the last election. There’s a book written about her life, but it’s kind of controversial because apparently some things were exaggerated by the author who interviewed her. Regardless, she’s had a rough life growing up Mayan. Her whole family was killed violently when she was younger. She taught herself Spanish, and she speaks it like a native. It was pretty cool to hear her speak. In that culture class, we’ve actually had a total of 3 speakers…all authors of books we’re reading. Last week, we had a female poet named Ana Maria Rodas come in and read some of her poetry and answer questions. She was extremely interesting. I hope the next two are good too. I have yet to read their books. I probably won’t since I have so much other reading to do.

Monterrico was alright this weekend, but I kind of feel like I wasted my entire weekend. When we got there, it was hot, humid, and sunny. But we had to eat first, and the service was extremely slow. It took us two hours to finish eating, and by that time, the sun was behind some thick clouds. I still swam in the pool. The water temp was perfect. The ocean was different there. It’s the Pacific, but the sand is black. I’ve never seen anything like it. The waves were enormous, and it was pretty dangerous to go in the water, but I just dipped my feet in, and it was soooo warm! I’m not used to that. It’s always so cold in CA. Anyway, we were looking forward to sun the next day. Sunday comes….zero sun, not even for 1 second. It was rainy and windy, and we all just wanted to go back to Antigua. Very disappointing. I’m as pasty-white as ever, and I didn’t get anything done this weekend that I needed to get done. The biggest excitement on Sunday was seeing a big sea turtle. I was just sitting by the pool when suddenly I saw a lifeguard sprint toward the ocean. I thought someone was in trouble because some other hotel workers started running too. Then, the guy came up holding a huge turtle, and he plopped it on the sand closer to our hotel. We were all oohing and aahing over it, taking pictures until we realized it was dead. Poor thing…it still looked alive. She even had eggs that she was going to bury in the sand. It was so sad.

Anyway, on that note, I’m off. Bye!