Poorly laptop

Apologies for lack of post yesterday... my laptop is not well! It seems to have caught a virus and it had been being quite slow for a few days, but yesterday it was totally knackered and wouldn´t even log in properly. I asked at the school and they suggested a repair place in the centre. For now, I´m at the school, using their computers.

I had my classes, including my private lesson with Sergio, where I learnt about the uses of the imperfect. Normally, it follows the same rules as French and English, but there is one use I had no idea about: they use the imperfect as a form of politeness. It is from the conditional, which resembles the imperfect for verbs ending with -ar. This means it is possible to say "I was having a coffee" where we would say "I would like a coffee"! Very odd but kind of cool too, as it is not a use I had heard of before and I hope to be able to use it soon!

Then I headed into the centre. I found the PC shop and it was closed. Shops here usually shut in the afternoon and then reopen later (to avoid working during the heat, I suppose). It was 3pm and the shop was due to reopen at 5pm, so I wandered around and even went into the huge department store called el corte inglés. It is rather expensive so I didn´t buy anything! Then I had a coffee and sat in the sun. At 5pm, I waited a bit and the shop reopened. They said I would need to leave my laptop with them so they could clean it because it is full of bugs. It should only cost about €30 which is their minumum price for anything. I hope to be able to collect it today. If not, I´ll have to wait until Wednesday because of the double Bank Holiday next week.

When I got home, José came to pick me up (in his car - the motorbike has a dead battery) and we met up with some people in town. I have been invited to someone´s house on Sunday to eat churros, a very typical Spanish breakfast thing. It should be fun... the woman makes them herself!

So, today I am off to the centre. I´m going to take my power cable into the repair shop so, if they haven´t fixed it yet, at least it won´t run out of juice before they can. Then I am going to try to find the other shopping area I have been told about, near the station.


I have some very exciting plans for next weekend! I´m going to go on a trip to Morocco! It costs €185 but this includes travel, 2 nights´ accommodation, all your meals and guided tours around various cities. It will be my first time out of Europe and I can´t not do it while I am so close! I was going to go alone, but José banned me, saying it is far too dangerous and I would end up spending more than that anyway! I am also seriously considering extending my stay here by a week or 2. At the end of our stay, we get a certificate of our level and I hope to be able to do B2. At the moment I am doing B1 and I reckon I could ask to move up the week after next and then do 2 or 3 weeks on B2 in order to get this certificate. The levels are from the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages Levels and I think the B1 would not look very impressive. Ideally I would like to get the C1, but I would need months here to manage that. I am very aware that this experience is a once in a lifetime one for me and it would be silly to leave before I have reached an adequate level. Although less time might be cheaper, it would be a waste of money in many ways.

So. That´s that for now. Unless (a) my laptop has been fixed or (b) I can find an internet cafe, you might not hear from me until Tuesday. ¡Hasta luego!