Frustration!

I am so frustrated by some of the other students. The young ones seem to be here for a holiday - they are very brown and clearly spend far more time on the beach than anything else! In class, they work hard on the grammar, but as soon as they have to actually discuss things, they clam up and refuse to speak. It seems that only Lothar (an older German bloke) and I actually make an effort at times. I don't mind too much - I'm here to learn and to practise, so I take every chance I can get to do this, but I hate that there are often long silences and I always end up stepping in to fill them. I think it might be because Lothar and I are older and are paying for this ourselves, so we intend to get the utmost out of it. The young 'uns (mainly German/American and in their early 20s) all live in the student house and they appear to speak English and/or German together. When they speak to me in English, I always reply in Spanish! I know I must get on their nerves a lot but, as I said, I'm paying a lot of money for this experience and I intend to get my money's worth.

Teresa's lesson was looking at the way using ser or estar with certain adjectives can totally change the meaning (I must remember to say significado (meaning) and not significación (significance) as I have been doing). It's really amazing how it works: e.g. el chico está orgulloso = the boy is proud, el chico es orgulloso = the boy is arrogant; estoy lista = I'm ready, soy lista = I'm smart etc.

Then we had a new teacher as Sergio is away today. Antonio is young and obviously not very experienced (está verde - he's inexperienced, as opposed to es verde - he's green!) so he had a hard task holding a conversation lesson for 90 minutes with our class. He had prepared talking about mitos (myths) and it was like getting blood out of a stone for much of the time. They warmed up a bit when we discussed the superstitions that exist in our countries, but couldn't cope again when they had to create their own superstitions. I enjoyed it, but kept feeling myself cringe when the others went quiet.

After the lesson, I expressed my frustration to Lothar and he said that he found that Antonio spoke too fast and the others didn't understand. Maybe I need to go easy on them!

So, I am now all finished for the day and am going to go to the beach this afternoon. I think I'll go to the centre of town tonight and have a wander.