The Opera

On Tuesday night I went to the Theatre Colon to go see the opera Fedra. The theatre was beautiful. The opera was a Greek tragedy about a step-mom falling love with her stepson. Spoiler Alert! In the end, pretty much everyone died. The opera was sung in Spanish, and above the stage there were Spanish subtitles. At first I thought that the subtitles were weird, but in the end they really helped me follow the story line. The music in the opera was beautiful, but the acting was a little cheesy, but over all it was a fun experience. To get to the theatre, I rode the subte (the subway) for the first time! I was nervous, but it was really easy, so now I have a quick way to get to places that are farther away. There are 3 different subways to take. So far I have only mastered one of them.

I had a mini-freak out the other day about learning Spanish. My classes are going ok. I’m learning some, but not as much as I would hope to have learned in a class that I go to everyday for 3 hours. Each week we get a new teacher. I really loved the teacher we had last week. I learned so much with here. If anyone in the class didn’t know a word she would explain the meaning in Spanish and then write the word on the white board in Spanish and English. When we learned a new verb tense she would ask a student to explain the tense in English. And for the majority of the class we would just all talk. I really loved it. My teacher this week only speaks in Spanish, so if she explains something I’m confused about I just get more confused. And I just all together stopped asking what words I don’t know mean, because when she explains the meaning I have no idea what she is saying. We talk a little in class, but we mostly just do worksheets that are not that helpful. The last two days have been better though. I’m enjoying my class, I’m just a little concerned that I’m not learning a lot, but my host mom has said that my Spanish has improved tremendously in the past two weeks.

Yesterday in class everyone was talking about the different holidays in their countries and us Americans explained what Black Friday is like. Our teacher just thought it was hilarious how crazy Black Friday can get. Today’s class was pretty great though because she explained all the different past tenses with the verbs and I think I understand a lot better.

I’m about to expose how big of a nerd I truly am. Since I don’t think only taking this Spanish class will help me improve as much as I want, I’m making a ton of flashcards. Basically every new word I learn, I make a flashcard for it. I’m also making flashcards for all the different verb tenses. In my free time, I am also reading Harry Potter in Spanish. So far it’s going really well! It’s a really slow process, I’m only on page 15, but I love being able to understand it. I tackle one paragraph at a time, and I need to look up a lot of the words. I get really excited when I don’t have to look up a single word in a sentence, and sometimes I can understand a whole paragraph (one that’s really short). Each word I look up I put it on a flashcard. I read through the paragraph once, and then reread it again. Like I said, it’s a slow process, but I’m really enjoying it. I have so many different piles of flash cards too ha. I have a different pile for each verb tense, a vocabulary pile, and a Harry Potter pile. I’m pretty proud of my piles, it’s kind of sad. I would rather stay in on a Friday or Saturday night and go over my flashcards and read Harry Potter than go out to the bars or any other social event. That’s kind of nerdy and antisocial of me, but oh well ha.

I’ve been becoming friends with other girls who are a lot better at Spanish than me, so I told them we are only going to speak in Spanish from now on, so that will also help me out. I have a little over two more weeks left in my class, after that, I’m thinking of taking private lessons. I think those would also be really helpful. I’ve heard they can be pretty expensive, but I can just take it twice a week or so and see how it goes. I’ll keep ya’ll posted. I know all of this can sound a little anal, but I really care about becoming fluent in Spanish.

Until Next Time,
Liz