Wednesday, July 31st, 2013

I went to bed at 10:45, got up twice during the night at 2am and 5:30, finally getting up at 6:40.

I studied the spelling of the words I’ve been missing and I think I may have figured out my “ie” vs “ei” problem.  Let’s see if I can improve on my 72% highest score this morning.  Well, that time I only registered 56%.  I know I can improve on that score.  That time I got 78% and I know I can do better.  I need to get to 90% to proceed to the next lesson.

Interesting, now RS is taking me to a new lesson – Unit 3 Lesson 2 on Vocabulary.   So far it’s covering a lot of what I already know – words in Spanish for year, month, week, and day, and the days of the week.

Martha stopped by to take a look at the problem I’m having with the balcony door.  She also tried to tell me about why they don’t have an answer yet to the “bonging” I keep hearing: “no lo pude llamar porque deje el telefono el numero en el maletin de las herramientas que tenemos en la terraza.” which translated to “I could not leave the phone call because the number in the briefcase of the tools we have on the terrace.”

She also had some information for me about their annual Festival of Flowers which according to my Colombia guide is from July 28^th to August 7^th: “Estamos en las fiestas delas flores se realiza muchos programas por toda la ciudad para diferentes custos metase a la direccion www.medellin.go.com alli encuentra la programacion el 7 de agosto dia de fiesta y por el exito por toda la 80 passa el desfile de los carros antiguos.” which translated to “We are at parties delas flowers takes many programs throughout the city for different custos be immersed in the direction there is the programming www.medellin.go.com August 7th day of celebration and success throughout the 80 passa the parade of old cars.”

I asked her if she has an old car “tu viejo carro?” and she said “yes” so she probably has a car in the parade.  I asked her where and she said “Exito” so I’m guessing if you stand in front of the mall on the right day at the right time you will see the parade.  I’ll have to ask Beatriz about that – or maybe Jhon.  If there is anything important there that I missed I’ll have to wait until my brother provides me with a translation.

Now she’s the 3^rd person I’ve known (Reina, Beatriz, Martha) that writes in mostly run on sentences only occasionally including commas instead of periods (Reina didn’t even bother to use commas which was why it was difficult to communicate with her).

I just checked www.medellin.go.com and the site doesn’t exist, however, as I was typing www.medellin.gov.com did come up so I must have been to that site before.  There is a place where you can click to get an English translation of the guide and then there’s a selection for Festival of Flowers.  The site says that the FoF is from August 2^nd to the 11^th and it looks like there are a lot of different activities in a lot of different places on a lot of different days.

I timed out on RS and when I logged back in it’s taking me to Unit 3 Lesson 3 on Grammar.  Oh boy!  Here’s a description of the English pictures I’m looking at…

I am writing.

She is eating.

We (men) are reading.

They (women) are drinking.

And here is how it is described in Spanish:

Yo estoy escribiendo.

Ella esta comiendo.

Nosotros estamos leyendo.

Ellas estan bebiendo.

Just before noon I walked down to Jhon’s office and talked to him a little bit.  Then I went to Viva and had a small Hambur dog and a small Pepsi at Dogger.  This “dog” was very different from the first one I had which was a large one.  Either a mistake was made one of the two times or a small one is very different from a large one.  Anyway, it cost a total of 7,400 ($3.89).

A young man I have seen before stopped at my table and we played a quick game without a clock.  I didn’t have much trouble beating him.

About 1:30 it starts to get hot there so I got a large Pepsi at Frisby.  The only problem is that later I’ll have to pee.  The only problem with that is I can’t leave anything there so I have to pack everything up, go to the restroom, and then come back and unpack everything.

2 boys and 2 girls stopped at my table and rattled off something in Spanish.  They seemed confused when I told them I don’t speak much Spanish.  I asked them if any of them spoke English and they all pointed to the same guy.  I could see his mind working trying to remember some English.  I asked him to sit down and we started to play a game of chess.  I was slaughtering him before I finally figured out that for a school project they had to ask people to define “happiness”.  Using sign language I conveyed to them that I would need a little time.  Finally, I told them “a good woman and a lot of money”.  They got a good laugh out of that but I think they agreed with me.  They asked me to write down my name and then they wanted to take a picture of all of us together.  That reminded me I had my iPad with me so I took a picture of them and then together with me.

After they left I realized I should have added “and good health”. 

Dinner was the small shish kebab at SanJote.

When I got back to my apartment I looked in the garage to see if my book was here, it wasn’t, but on the stairs were 2 envelopes for me.  They were both pension deposit receipts, one for July 1^st and the other for May 1^st.  I guess one took 1 month and the other 3 months?

Beatriz came over about 6:30.  I asked her about the Festival of Flowers and we spent some time on the internet looking for information.  We got a phone number and she’s going to call tomorrow to get more detail.

We went for a walk for some ice cream but the place I had seen but never been to across from Likkes was closed.  And Almibar at Laureles Mall was closed so we went to Viva and we had yogurt ice cream at Mimo’s for 13,900.  This is the same place that’s in Golf Mill’s food court although there it is self serve and then you weigh the product.

Beatriz and I made a date for Friday night to go for pizza.  There’s a place called Piccolo’s on Avenida Nutibara that isn’t too far of a walk, in fact it’s almost right next door to McDonalds.

I see a couple of my pension deposits have been made so I have a little extra money in my account for tomorrow.