February 26 - Fairgrounds Construction

This morning, working on my homework felt a little like banging my head against a wall.  I was doing some work with a literary piece that had all of poetic elements (metaphor, symbolism, ...) that you could ever ask for.  Sadly for me, I am still pretty much in the "literal" phase.  I can handle the occasional colloquial phrase, but in terms of the flowery language and imagery in the piece I was reading - I probably only really got 50%. 

After working for a few hours, I decided that I needed to get up and walk or I was going to be useless in class and then afterwards in intercambio.  So, I headed out to the fairgrounds.  Most of the year, the fairgrounds are just a big open, barren space.  But for the April Fair (which this year is actually the first week in May), it is transformed.  The transformation, as it turns out, takes months.  They started building the opening gate earlier this month.

They have also started building the frames for the hundreds of tents that families and groups will use for their private parties for the week.  I think about it like tailgating.  Everyone is there for the same event but each is having their own private party.  Of course this tailgate lasts for a week - and the parties are in pre-built tents instead of out of the backs of cars....

It will be interesting to see how things progress over the next two months.  

After walking for about an hour, I headed back, finished my homework, had got ready for class.

I am really glad that I took the break because today in class there was exactly ONE student - me.  So for three intense hours, we worked through the literary piece, did some listening exercises, and talked.  I learned a ton and felt good, but it took a lot of energy.

I was absolutely spent - so I took some time to walk around a little before heading in to Intercambio.  We had a good crowd.  Spring is definitely in the air, some the of the students from the English language school played a little music, sang, and danced the Sevillana.  The Sevillana is a folk dance that looks a lot like Flamenco - it is the dance that something like 20,000 people will do together on the Monday night of the fair.  I didn't have anything cultural to add, but I did have cookies to share.

After a couple of songs, we all settled in to practice our language for a couple of hours.  

With Thursday being a holiday here and us leaving on Friday morning for Aftrica - tomorrow is the end of the school week for me.   There should be three students tomorrow and according to the teacher, we will have some new students starting next week.