May 27th 2008

I was lucky today because I forgot to turn my alarm on, but I still woke up by eight. My next move was to have breakfast which was a piece of bread, a cup of tea and a cup of water. I relaxed for a while and then I got ready to go to my classes at the language school. When I arrived at language school, I was reminded that it is Mother’s Day here in Bolivia. So there was a fiesta for the professors since most of them were mothers. At the lunch there was Fanta which is soda and chache chaches which is a pastry filled with meat and vegetables. After I was done eating the pastry filled with meat, I was told that the meat that I ate was llama. So today was the first time I have experienced eating an exotic meat. The meat tasted like pork and was delicious; it is possible that I might try it again before I leave. This is possible because I intend to try and experience as many things as possible while I am here. Following the lunch, I had my first class with Maite in which I reviewed reflexive verbs and learned about direct objects. In my next class with Susana, I went over reflexive verbs and in general had a normal conversation about my life in Spanish as I would if I were explaining my life in English. My class with Angelica, I continued to work on my reflexive verbs and be able to use those verbs in explaining the routine of certain popular people. I then ended my classes with Maite in which I reviewed direct objects and started to go over indirect objects. All of my classes, went really well today and I feel like my Spanish is coming along because before my last class I was sitting around with a group of the students who were all speaking Spanish and I was able to join in the conversation without any pauses because I did not think about what I wanted to say in English and then translate it; I just said what I wanted to say. I feel that this flowed conversation that I was able to have in the class with Susana and the other students was a real success. One of the students at the language center used to be a part-time clown and he held a class about how to make balloon animals, so I decided to stay and learn how to make different animals. I then returned to the house and relaxed for a while before dinner. Since it is Mother’s Day, I assume that I will be having dinner alone since Susana’s children are taking her out somewhere. However I did not have dinner alone, I had dinner with Lucas, his grandfather, and Adelina. For dinner tonight I had chicken with potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots. I also tried for the first time plantains and this vegetable they have here that is a small, black, cold, potato; the potato was of course cooked and then made cold. It is interesting to me that today as been a day of new experience. After dinner I attempted to practice my guitar, but one of my strings broke. So after restringing my guitar I finally had the opportunity to practice. When I was finished playing the guitar, I did my evening devotion and typed up my notes from my classes today. While I was doing my evening devotion; two things struck me. One was the fact that I noticed is when I am involved in speaking Spanish; if I follow the modal of other people who speak Spanish and put emotion into it that it is easier to speak. Also after being here for almost two weeks, my walks to and from catching the bus and me riding a bus, that it is very uncomfortable to be the minority and have people staring. Before going to bed I looked over my Spanish, did my evening devotion, and shower.