La biblioteca

I found the library today with Pablo and it is exactly the place I have been looking for since I got here. Priority number one is to learn Spanish, and as I've learned from a variety of sources, I needed to be learning from a variety of sources. I need to be listening, speaking, reading, writing, studying, and thinking in Spanish. I have a lot of opportunities to listen, but when I don't understand I zone out. Speaking is great, but I find myself running is a very limited loop. What I need is a good place for some consecrated studying. Readin' n' Writin'

The heat and the constant layer of sweat that rests on my skin makes it difficult to concentrate in our apartment, so I have made a couple attempts at local coffee shops. I walk by one called the Café de Indias on my way to school, but they unforgivably lack that which should be central to any coffee shop, that is, black coffee. It was the same in New Zealand; the world outside of the US has apparently moved beyond the filter and now makes everything with espresso. And in Spain, the Americano tall is about 4 oz, not the mug I like to milk as I work through my notes or a good book. I'm half tempted to wander into one of the three Starbucks on the 6 blocks of the main avenue I walk everyday just to soak in their air conditioning and the familiarity of a large cuppa joe.

But the library. It's air conditioned, it's quiet, and there are books. Wildly exceeds my requirements.

So we encounter a couple of our classmate on the way and end up sitting together. There are like 8 of us (4 familiar, 4 strangers) around this little workstation, but there are probably 100s of people working quietly overall, so the tone is obviously set, no talking.

I had picked up this elementary level, abridged version of a Spanish classic about a three-pointed hat and have been muscling through without catching every (nearly any) details (major plot points). After feeling both satisfied that I had turned to the final page, and pathetic for truly grasping very little, I took the quiz in the back of the book and not only did better than I thought, but also filled in some gaps (like that some of the new names that kept popping up weren't always new people) and thought I might gain from a second reading. Back to page one.

With a clear layout of the story, and a much more thorough reading style, I approached the third or fourth page with unfamiliar certainty. I knew that the ugly man was cutting the grapes off the vine by the wheat mill! And a little later, I after understanding the simplest little spat, I laughed out loud. Which, was a little inappropriate for the setting. Meredith, who was sitting next to me, gave me a look and just had to know what was so funny. So I told her:

So there's this man, who works at the flour mill, and he's really ugly right? and um, he has like this really beautiful wife. Oh, and he's got a hunch. He's a hunch back. Okay. So then there's this other guy. Right, he works for the government okay? And he's ugly too. And so the husband and the wife are talking about the guy from the government, and the husband think the guy also likes the wife. But she tells him not to get jealous because she is committed, even though he has this unsightly hunch. In fact, she loves him for the hunch. And then he delivers the punch line, that the government worker has a bigger hunch than him.

She wasn't impressed either.