Week 2

I was lazy this morning and got the bus into school because it was drizzling. It has been rather dreary and cloudy today, so I haven't done any sunbathing.

Lessons:
Teresa: we went through the homework in some detail. I'm not sure how, but it took the whole 90 minutes! She is very good at deviating from the subject in hand, so we ended up chatting a lot - all good when it is in Spanish and therefore useful! Teresa said it would be good if we bought a couple of short classic Spanish novels and read them in class and at home. I bought them both in the bookshop near my flat on my way home. Haven't started reading them yet - decided to watch the Spanish film I downloaded instead: El Labarinto del Fauno. I've watched it before (with subtitles) but had forgotten how sad it was. I almost wish i hadn't watch it because I cried most of the way through the last half an hour and now feel rather morose. I also ate too many pipas (sunflower seeds) whilst watching it and feel a bit sick!

Anyway, the books are:
Crónica de Una Muerte Anunciada by Gabriel García Márquez (this is the book from which came the excerpt we studied with Sergio last week)
Bodas de Sangre by Federico García Lorca

Neither book looks very easy or fun, but they are both short and I hope to finish at least one before I leave.

Sergio's lesson: Our topic is about being ecological and we looked at lots of vocabulary and discussed how things are in each of our countries. It being a Monday, the next cohort of students arrived. We had one new classmate today, a Finnish girl.
Our class is now:
Me (UK), Timmy (USA), Barbara (USA), Steffi (Holland), Lila (Germany), Lothar (Germany)Isabella (Sweden) and New Girl (Finland).

Then Laura and I had our private lesson. Sergio has taken over a bigger class at this time, so we had Teresa. I do really like her, but I find her quite tiring - she is so dramatic and cheerful! Sergio has a way of explaining grammar calmly that I had got used to, so I am having to adapt to Teresa's method. We went over the preterites and did some worksheets, then she explained the imperfect. My homework for this class was to revise the future tense, as Teresa was going to do this with Laura in the second half of the lesson. In the end, I spent 2.5 hours doing this and a load of exercises on the preterite when I got home. The weather being how it was, I thought I would make the most of some indoors time. The forecast is good for the next couple of days, so I will get some more beach/pool time in then.

Teresa keeps telling everyone what a brilliant student I am! It makes me feel proud of the work I am putting in, but also a bit uncomfortable because I remember resenting her favourites last Monday! Then again, I would rather be a favourite for being hardworking than for being cute and ditzy like last week's teacher's pet, who usually just giggles when she doesn't understand something. She giggles quite a lot.