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| Hanging Streamers in the Dead of Night |
Today, I left home around 1:30 to attend a "cultural activity" before school. Today's activity was a visit to the Flamenco Cultural Center. We watched a film and checked out the exhibits while one of the teachers from the school led as around "field trip style". I have come to some conclusions about Flamenco - (1) I really like flamenco guitar. (2) I think Flamenco dance is interesting - I prefer the women to the men and I like the castanets. (3) I do not like Flamenco singing. I understand that it is supposed to be powerful and passionate, but to me it sounds like someone stepped on a cats tail with stiletto heels. I know that people work really hard at achieving the particular sound that they do, I just don't like it.
Class was good today. I am starting to realize that most of my peers are not very good at grammar in their own languages. So, although they all speak and understand Spanish better than me - I can out-grammar them all - I know the difference between indicative, imperative, subjunctive, perfect, imperfect, and indefinite; between direct and indirect objects; and between definite and indefinite articles....in a word I understand the mathematics of the language (not to be confused with the language of mathematics). As you might imagine, I am not the winner in this scenario- my only hope is that this foundation of good grammar will eventually translate to the better speaking and understanding which my peers already have.
On the way home from class, I stopped at the Corte Inglese supermarket (in the basement of the department store) to get a few things that so far, I can only find there. I always spend longer there than I intend - maybe they have it in the basement with no windows on purpose so people will not realize that it has turned dark and they are still shopping (like the casinos in vegas with gambling) - probably not.
