Carol from Toronto, who I mentioned in my last blog, has taken me under her wing.
On Wednesday she took me on a tour of downtown Montevideo and this weekend we will go away together to Punta Del Esta, a resort town about two hours to the east where the Rio De La Plata meets the Altlantic. Montevideo is surrounded by beaches and seawalls which run for miles around the city but Montevideo is not situated on the ocean, it is on a river so wide that it looks like the sea. I have spent many hours walking through the palm trees by the river wearing all of my sweaters...it is winter here after all. During the day the temperature rises to around 15 degrees but at night it dips down to 2 or 3 degrees and with no central heating in the houses it can get a bit chilly.
My Spanish lessons are going well. I have 5 hours of instruction a day and I have to study most of the rest to keep up with all of the vocabulary I am learning. I have now reached a stage in my Spanish where I know enough words to truely butcher the language. Before, I resorted to pointing and Spanglish but could not call what I produced Spanish. Now, armed with the dangerous combination of a swelling vocabulary and a minimal knowledge of Spanish grammar, sentences, syntaxes, and agreements crumble at my feet. I have been particularly unkind to Maria, the heroine of my Spanish worksheets not my homestay mother. I have put Maria through the indignaties of having tea with her dog, bathing in a birdbath, and eating a menu. I think that she, and I, hope I get to a higher plane of Spanish rather quickly.
On Wednesday she took me on a tour of downtown Montevideo and this weekend we will go away together to Punta Del Esta, a resort town about two hours to the east where the Rio De La Plata meets the Altlantic. Montevideo is surrounded by beaches and seawalls which run for miles around the city but Montevideo is not situated on the ocean, it is on a river so wide that it looks like the sea. I have spent many hours walking through the palm trees by the river wearing all of my sweaters...it is winter here after all. During the day the temperature rises to around 15 degrees but at night it dips down to 2 or 3 degrees and with no central heating in the houses it can get a bit chilly.
My Spanish lessons are going well. I have 5 hours of instruction a day and I have to study most of the rest to keep up with all of the vocabulary I am learning. I have now reached a stage in my Spanish where I know enough words to truely butcher the language. Before, I resorted to pointing and Spanglish but could not call what I produced Spanish. Now, armed with the dangerous combination of a swelling vocabulary and a minimal knowledge of Spanish grammar, sentences, syntaxes, and agreements crumble at my feet. I have been particularly unkind to Maria, the heroine of my Spanish worksheets not my homestay mother. I have put Maria through the indignaties of having tea with her dog, bathing in a birdbath, and eating a menu. I think that she, and I, hope I get to a higher plane of Spanish rather quickly.
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