This is Bill’s post from yesterday. I spent all morning studying French in preparation for my conversation with Dominique then had three hours of Spanish. I was wiped out by the end of the day! I’ll have a post tonight or tomorrow morning after our salsa lessons.
We made a run to the market this morning after breakfast to get a few things. It’s very nice to have the store so close. The bigger Walmart type store is close to the school so it is easy to stop at before coming back to our apartment. We will have to swing through tonight so we can get the rest of our list. They have a bigger selection and bigger sizes.
I was a good student and did some studying and made a list of questions in Spanish I will ask Karen. Karen is not a very Spanish sounding name.
We couldn’t use the pool because the guy was painting, my guess they don’t want people in the pool area as it is where the painter’s ropes terminate and so if he lost equipment or he himself was to fall it could be a traumatic day of swimming. So studying was the next choice as we did not want to commit to going to the beach and dealing with the sand.
Emily was not studying Spanish though, she was refreshing her French for her lunch with Dominique.
It is Wednesday and at some point the cleaning lady will come. They introduced us to her when we arrived but I don’t remember her name, I will have to ask Emily to chat with her and get it again. I am studying but after asking her name I would be out of conversation since I also know she lives in Colombia already. Everything after that would be one or two word sentences. Karen tells me not to translate what is being said, instead I am supposed to get the meaning of what is being said. I have a hard time with that. I can get whether or not the person’s mood is good or bad but after that I need to know some of what the person is saying to get what they are talking about.
We were not able to get a swim in today at all. The security guard that mans the front desk said the pool was closed all day because of the painter. Painter was gone, the guy that was cleaning the pool had told we could swim after two. Maybe two o’clock, maybe two hours, could be two days. He was not specific. It was to dark after class and dinner to swim in the ocean.
Class went well for me. The math I was allowed to do in English, I just had to pronounce all the math in Spanish. Tomorrow it’s going to be about money. Karen thinks I am improving. I think she’s paid to say that. I’m still not sure I could communicate effectively very much. It is going to be a process. One nice thing is all my DouLingo has given me some vocabulary and my CDs have given me some phrases that are starting to appear in class. I made it to the second section today! I’m not sure if that’s exciting or not. I’m not sure I remember section one. I do still have my materials and can continue to use them to study.
We at dinner at the apartment tonight, so no restaurant stories. We are going to work on getting a photo of the front of the restaurants we go to and the name. Some of our readers may end up here and want to know where to and where not to eat!
The lady who was supposed to clean today didn’t show up. We have been keeping things tidy and doing some laundry but we need to take the garbage out since the notice in the elevator says we are not supposed to toss it out the windows. I will have to find where it goes in the morning.
Speaking of garbage, when we first got here we were noticing a lot of garbage in the streets and along where we walk. Emily and I had conversations about how they need to do some campaign about not littering. The last couple days our route to school has been getting cleaned up some. They probably still need a campaign so people don’t litter and dump waste all over. They also need to push cleaning up after pets. Though there are some random dogs that seem homeless, they may be following San Francisco rules. In Peru dogs wondered alone, but since they were dressed and don’t have thumbs we assumed they had owners, here they are not dressed.
It’s hard to believe it’s already been 5 days!! This two weeks is going to go fast. We will be trying to get in some sights yet. We did spend a little time on the wall, we will have to get some pictures.
We are looking at Salsa lessons tomorrow and possibly an island excursion this weekend! There are a couple museums and a church we are probably going to visit.
Traveling with Emily! 