Confessions of A Working Girl

 I’ll get to why I’m overwhelmed later, but for the moment, let me tell about Salamanca.

So, when we got to Salamanca, all of us (everyone in my group) was a little nervous. Strangely, I wasn’t really, but I did worry about how well I’d be able to communicate. When we got off the bus, our host families were waiting. My host family consisted of two people: Matilda and her husband.  Although it sounds like Matilda’s mother also stays here during November and December. But I’ve mentioned this? And about my roommate Penny–she’s from California.

Anyway, first few days were a little nerve-wracking since I wasn’t quite sure yet on the way to the building where I have my classes. Apparently, the University of Salamanca is split into more than three different buildings, and the one that my classes are in is the Cursos Internacional building. I’ll have to remember to take a picture at some point…

I have five classes, three of which are in spanish. The ones in spanish are Grammar (somehow I tested advanced, despite not finishing half the test), Spanish Literature, and Spanish for Business. Out of those three, my favorite so far is the literature course. It’s interesting, hearing about the writers, plus, eventually, I think we’ll actually be reading a book or two. That’s the class, that, on one of the first days, the teacher mentioned Truman Capote–as a writer. I think I vaugly knew that he was a writer, but usually I think of him as an actor, since Murder By Death is one of my favorite movies. So I immediatly said “I thought he was an actor.” The teacher was like “I don’t think so.” But I insisted. “He is!” After class, I showed the teacher that on IMDB it said that Truman Capote had been in 4 or 5 films. A few days ago, the teacher told the class “Remember when I was talking about Truman Capote, and Wen said he was an actor and I said no he wasn’t and she said yes he was? It turns out that he was in 4 or 5 movies.” This was all in spanish, of course, but I thought it was kinda neat that the teacher also researched it or whatever and then told the class.

The two classes I have in English are International Marketing and European Union. Both are very interesting, but I like international marketing better.

One of the things that ISA sponsored was an ‘intercambios’ where you could meet  people from here that wanted to practice their english. It ends up being that we talk in a mixture of both. I went, but couldn’t stand it for much longer than an hour and a half, since we were in a bar that had a lot of smokers.  Anyway, one of the people I met there just called me and wanted to meet again so that I could explain something to her…I had brought my kindle since that’s the only dictionary that I have, and, if I understood her right, she said that she bought one as well.

Anyway, and onto why I got overwhelmed:

Today, there were four extra people for lunch. Matilda’s son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. It was noisy! Almost immediately, I was overwhelmed, since I didn’t understand much of the conversation. I caught words here and there, but I couldn’t even get the gist of most of the conversation. But, I was thinking, perhaps that’s a good thing. If I were to sit at more lunches like that, I think I would learn faster, if only so that I don’t feel like such an idiot not understanding most of what I hear.

1 Comment » Ana:

November 13th, 2010 @ 7:49 am Estoy segura de que si pasas mas tiempo con la familia que solo habla espanol, vas a comprender mas muy pronto.