Thursday, April 3rd, 2014

Last night I went to bed at 9:30.  My eyes felt very tired but I didn’t take any aspirin.  I fell asleep rather quickly but woke up at 3:45 (still that’s 6 hours sleep; not bad for me).  I got up and took 2 Excedrin Migraine and went back to bed.  Now this is rare – I heard a mosquito buzzing near my ear a couple of times.  I also heard the whistle guy a couple of times.  I finally gave up and got up at 5 am.

I had my usual breakfast at Los Mejores and then stopped at Fresco Pan for a cup of coffee so I could study my Spanish notes.  I expected Maria to stop at my table and ask what I wanted but she just brought me my usual coffee and ham & cheese pizza so I ate it.  Now I’m stuffed!  Gonzalo stopped by to say hi and as usual as he was leaving he said “Just a moment”.  Of course I didn’t see him again after that.

A little later I stopped at Redd’s and had an orange juice then I went into Viva CC and studied some more.

Warning – Spanish 101 lesson immediately ahead.

I forgot to mention something about my meeting the other day with Bob & Margarita.  He mentioned they had spent a lot of time trying to express the difference in Spanish between “being boring” and “being bored” to the point they finally agreed not to use the word.  He’s right that there isn’t a separate word in Spanish to describe “boring” and “bored”, in Spanish it’s just “aburrido”.  But they have 2 different verbs to express “I am”.  (First, I must mention that “I” in Spanish is “Yo”.)  To describe the essence of something or a rather permanent condition like “boring” they use “soy”.  For a temporary condition they use “estoy”.  So, “I am boring” is “Yo soy aburrido” and “I am bored” is “Yo estoy aburrido”.  Got it?

End of Spanish 101 Lesson

During my Spanish lesson I got a call from Dario and I couldn’t understand what he was saying.  I gave the phone to Jhon and after he talked to him I was able to understand Dario.  He told him: 1) use International Spanish, 2) talk word by word slowly, 3) use known phrases.  Dario told me that he wouldn’t be available for chess tonight but not to forget about the English class at 7pm tomorrow.

I’ve already expressed my problem with the fact that everything in Spanish seems to be masculine (preceded by El) or feminine (preceded by La) but a word we used today was really ridiculous.  Dress in Spanish is “vestido” and it’s masculine!  Now I can’t depend on any noun making any sense masculine or feminine wise.

After my Spanish lesson I took a bus and walked up to FFSS where I had 2 Cokes and a hamburger for lunch.  They were playing a medieval movie called In the Name of the King on their large screen TV that looked interesting so I made note of it.

I stopped at AFA and talked to Lorena.  I learned: each translation between a man and a lady is done in her office; a man’s translated letter is sent to the lady’s email address (with any pictures as attachments) and they also call to read the letter over the phone; my “confirmations” were a result of letters I sent.  I sent letters to Luz Amparo and Yuri on March 25^th and Rubi on March 27^th.  I received Confirmation letters from Yuri on March 28^th and Rubi and Luz Amparo on March 31^st.

I stopped at the apartment for a little extra cash and then took another bus to the Home Center where I bought another set of horizontal blinds (35,900) for my bedroom.  The other set was green and this one is blue to match my blanket. As I was coming down the escalator there were 2 TVs playing sports to advertise Direct TV.  My White Sox were playing the Minnesota Twins and were ahead 8-7 in the top of the 7^th inning.  It was raining so I stopped at Popsy and had a Snickers ice cream cone.  I started raining harder so I took a taxi back to the apartment for 6mil and it stopped raining just a few minutes later.

I finished Tom Clancy’s The Cardinal of the Kremlin and downloaded his Clear and Present Danger.

T-shirt (actually more like a uniform top worn by a man and a woman): Montessori School Teacher.

Now I keep losing my Network and Internet connection.

I just checked my Inbox on AFA and found I have an email from Luz Amparo.  She signed my IMBRA form and now I have her real email address.  I think I’ll say “hi” real quick.