Barcelona

So I survived my first day. Three days, actually.  I’m actually surprised nothing bad has happened to me yet. I haven’t gotten lost, I haven’t been robbed, I haven’t starved to death or anything of the sort.  I got there early for my first day (always a good thing, right?) which is pretty unusual for me, since I’m constantly late for everything.  I just don't like wasting time sitting around waiting.  Whatever.  So I met the rest of my classmates, who are all older than me and insist upon calling me “the baby.” Being the youngest in my grade at school since I was in kindergarten, I should be used to that—even though I’m not.  There are only seven of us, but between us all, we actually make a pretty diverse bunch.  Washington DC, Chicago, New Jersey, England, Serbia, South Africa, and Scottish-Australian.  Its pretty interesting, actually.  I love accents, and different dialects, so I was pretty enthralled with all the different ones that I encountered in just my small class.  Seriously.  I could just listen to people talk all day long, as long as they had some awesome accent—and it wouldn’t even matter what they said. 

Plus, there are all those quirky things that people from the UK (or people who learned from people from the UK) use, like “jolly” and “whilst” and “nankard.”  Or weird pronunciations of words like “tomato” (to-mah-toe) or “garage” (gare-edge).  Even one of my teachers, Erwin, speaks in a British accent, although he says he is from Majorca.  The other teacher, Geoff, is from Baltimore, MD.  Its weird how no matter how far away from home I get, I always find people who are from someplace within 50 miles of my house—usually even closer—or at least know someone who is. 

As part of the course, we get taught 3 lessons in foreign language with no English.  I suppose that’s only fair, since that’s how our poor students will feel.  But anyway, Geoff, who used to teach in Prague, is teaching us Czech, which is definitely not a phonemic language, and is thoroughly confusing!  I can now say hello both formally (dobry den) and informally (ajoj—pronouced ahoy), as well as introduce myself (Jmenuji se Dawn) and tell people that I’m hungry, (mam hlad) which I am.  Not gonna lie, it was pretty strange to have a lesson in straight up Czech, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be.  I thought he was gonna come in, and start gibbering off in Czech, and I’d sit there like a deer in the headlights from 60 minutes.  But he talked slowly, and used lots of miming, and drew on the board.  It wasn’t all that bad. Confusing, yes, and frustrating too, and it made my brain hurt, but rewarding in the end, at least kind of.  And now I know what my students will feel like…