Dia 13, La Bomba! 29 Junio

Hello all my lovely readers!

Today, like many days, started off normal… nothing exciting to tell you about: breakfast, shower, writing letters, finishing off updates, etc. I went to class at 2:00… and didn’t really enjoy my Spanish class today which was quite frustrating. I normally enjoy that class (well…normally, we’ve only had it twice, but still). Today was more talking about the elections of yesterday than about really learning Spanish, which I guess you could look at it as “Oh look at all the vocabulary you could have learned when talking about it!” But I saw it as, “I have a Politics class…I’ll talk about elections then. I would like to learn more about the Spanish language in general…when are we getting to the subjunctive?!”

We finally did get to a few worksheets where I realized that my knowledge of the imperfect vs. the preterit past verb forms wasn’t as good as I originally thought. We were given stories where both types of verb forms are used, and it got really confusing knowing when to put what… Okay, those of you who don’t know Spanish much…here is a quick “lesson” (well, not really, but still):

In English, past tense, we say: When I was a child, I ate apples every day.
Yesterday, I ate an apple.

See how easy that is? Same verb: ate. Doesn’t matter when it happened, if it is in the past; we use it in the past tense.

Spanish: Cuando era niña, comía mazanas todos los días.
Ayer, comé una manzana.

See why that might get frustrating? There are two different verb forms for it, depending on if it was something that happened once in the past or something that happened often in the past. Now, it doesn’t seem that difficult right there, but there is more to it, I am finding out. When you are telling a story about something that happened and giving a setting to the story: i.e. “It was raining…” even if it only rained that one night of your story, you still use that first form because it is the setting of the story. OR, if you are saying something like, “While they walked here, the crowd laughed.” (Yeah, not the best sentence, moving on.) The first verb would be one way, and the second would be the other, because as one action is happening, the other one happens… or something like that. Sigh.

Sorry for the Spanish lesson (ish). I think I was trying to help myself study, ha ha. But hopefully you can now understand my frustration with that part of the language, and this isn’t even the hard stuff yet! I did get homework. We have one worksheet, one writing over what our bedrooms were like when we were kids (imperfect verb form!) and one leyenda norteamericana (I get to make up or tell a north American folk tale that has some form of truth in it…how fun).
After class I went home and was able to update and put up a few of my Colonia photos. There are more coming…once I can get to a place where the computer decides to be faster than 10 minutes per 8 photos. Time can add up when you’re trying to do it, especially if you are using your housemate’s wi-fi card and she’s home waiting patiently to get it back.

My host mom made gnocchi for dinner. (And no, I didn’t know how to spell that on my own, Microsoft Word helped me a bit). She says it is a tradition to make it on the 29th of every month to celebrate having money. I don’t really know why that is…but I think it’s cute. It was pretty good too. I don’t know if it is my favorite type of pasta, but I’ll eat it again (next month!).

Around 7:00 I left my place and headed for…. La Bomba! It’s a drum show that happens every Monday night and it was so much fun! I knew for sure that at least one person from my program was going to be there, but his phone hasn’t been working so I couldn’t get a hold of him to set a meeting time or anything. I got there and there were so many people outside of this place that I didn’t know if I was supposed to go in, or wait outside, or what the deal was. Luckily, as I was about to head it, I saw two other people from our program walk up and was oh so happy to see them! (Thank you Eric and Meaghan for being there!) They had been there the week before, so they basically knew what to do. You walk into the ticket booth area and pay $15 pesos ($5 US) and they give you a ticket…then you walk about 10 feet to the entrance where they tear your ticket.

Then, you are let loose into this WIDE outside space…well, it’s inside outside if that makes sense, which I am sure it doesn’t. There are four walls… no ceiling. That’s better. And there’s this HUGE staircase that leads…I don’t know where because the show was behind the stair case. There is a large drink area where you can get all sorts of drinks (yes, beer, but there was water and soda, etc.) Then to the left of the drinks is another wide opening (which is behind the staircase) to where the show is. It basically looks like you are in someone’s garage, but it’s the biggest garage I’ve ever seen. So maybe more like an airplane hangar? That could hold maybe two large airplanes, plus all that extra stuff you’d have in there? There are large pillars that have different colors of paint on them, large signs that say: “Prohibir fumar” (no smoking) which people completely ignored. Then, there is a stage, with all sorts of kinds of drums on it.

And then… the music starts at 8:00. There are maybe 10-15 people in this band and they all move around from instrument to instrument throughout the show. They are all so talented! There is a conductor who basically dances as he conducts and the music is just…well, if you DON’T move while listening to it, it probably means you’re dead. There was even a 60 year old man there moving around to the music. It’s… infectious, in the not “disease” way, but the fact that everyone around you starts swaying and you can’t help but join in and at least bob your head to the music. It was so much fun! I had a blast…yes, afterwards everything sounded funny because we just happened to be right next to the speakers and it was LOUD, but other than that, what a wonderful experience. And Grandma, I was home before 11:00, so no worries about me being out too late! =) It’s a two hour show and definitely worth the five bucks. A couple of people who went last week and this week were like, “We’re going three for three next week!” I don’t know if I will go every week, probably depends on my homework load and how busy my weekend was/week will be. But I am definitely going to go again!

Well, tomorrow looks like a pretty uneventful day. Politics class for four hours! EWW. I’ll try to survive! More from the COLD (it got down to the 40s! Ah! Ha ha) Southern hemisphere later! Love you!