Some day I´ll run out of things to say….

…not today though…

Street Numbers:  One of the things that I´ve noticed in all the cities I´ve been in is that the street numbers don´t match up.  So you might have #80 on one side of the street and on the other side will be #51.

Frustations:  Outside of not speaking the language, my two biggest frustrations are these:  not being able to drink the tap water and not being able to recycle.  They go hand-in-hand of course.  Since you can´t drink the tap water, you´re forced to buy bottled water which you are then unable to recycle.  I really don´t understand what the deal is with the tap water.  They can obviously purify the water in order to bottle in….so why can´t they do that with the tap water.

House: A little bit more on the house I´m staying in.  There are three other students there…all of them are advanced Spanish language students which is helpful for me since they can tell me how to say certain things.  They´re all leaving this weekend and presumably more students will be moving in.

My classes:  Are mostly going well, though it´s overwhelming to think how much I have to learn.  My biggest frustration is that in Spanish, all nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.  And everything else (such as the adjectives) has to agree with gender of the noun.  (I remember the same thing from French).   I´m not sure who came up with the idea of giving nouns genders but as I said to someone in class today….”It´s not a masculine pluma (pen), it´s not a feminine pluma, it´s just a pluma!!!”  I feel pretty strongly about this.  If I accomplish nothing else during my time in Latin America, I hope to make them realize how unnecessary this is.  Anyway, there´s also a student in all my classes who drives me crazy.  He’s a nice enough guy but he doesn´t seem serious about learning and is always goofing off and wasting class time.  And he rarely knows where we´re at when he´s called on: “Huh….what….huh….me….number 3…huh….ummm….yeah….okay….number 3, right?”  This goes on in all the classes.  Ugh!!!

My free time: Has mostly been taken up with studying.  I do like to go into downtown in the evenings and hang out and people watch while I´m doing my studying.  Last night, there was a concert in the gazebo in the main garden and a bunch of couples (mostly older) dancing.  Very cool.

Photos: Hopefully I´ll be able to post some by this weekend.