18 April 2010

I've been slacking a little bit on the updates, but again this can be attributed to the majority of my time being spent outside the house. The last few weeks can be summed up by saying I've spent a great deal of time in the park, gone to class as usual, and continued enjoying every second of being in Santiago.

The one out of the ordinary thing that went on recently was my trip to Finisterre last weekend. The weather was beautiful, so my friend Brandon and I left Friday afternoon and took a bus to Finisterre. One of our teachers has a house there that she only uses a few weeks out of the year, and she offered to let us stay there. So we spent two nights in Finisterre on a mini-vacation. I watched the sunrise from the patio both mornings we were there. After that we ate breakfast, headed to the beach, ate lunch in a restaurant, spent the afternoon on the beautiful patio, went for a walk, cooked dinner, and went to bed. That was the general schedule of the weekend, and it made it very hard to leave.

Before I have to leave Santiago (less than two months left), I'm attempting to learn a little of the language of Galicia--the province of Spain where Santiago is located--Gallego. I've started studying it along with two friends, and our teachers (who all speak Gallego as well as Spanish) have offered to help in any way they can. It's very similar to Spanish (which means I can more or less understand it even though I speak very little), but I had forgotten what it felt like to start learning a language because it's been years since I started studying Spanish. It's like going back to square one, and this is the feeling with a language similar to one I already speak! It should be interesting to see how much Gallego I can learn before I leave. It won't be an immensely useful language to know because they only speak it here in Galicia, but it's an interesting thing to study.

The end of this experience gets closer every day, so I will be out of the house soaking up Santiago as much as possible over the next few weeks.

1 comment:

  1. Buenas

    En verdad, y en base a mi experiencia en Eire, tu nivel de un idioma será siempre directamente proporcional a la gente con la que compartes tu tiempo. Es decir, si cuando estuve en Eire en el año 1994 hubiera escogido de amigos a chicos/as españoles, hoy en día no entedería ni "papa" de inglés, estoy seguro.
    Pero decidí juntarme con austriacos, italianos y como no autóctonos porque decían que mi aspecto físico era puramente irlandés jajajaajaj
    Bien, gracias a esta decisión, aprendí el idioma.

    En tu caso, es igual, procura no hablar nada de inglés el tiempo que te queda, de ese modo, aprenderás mucho más y más rápido castellano y gallego.
    Un servidor, es decir yo XD, soy "galego-falante", cuanto más tiempo pases con gente que hable tanto gallego a lo largo del día como yo, más aprenderás y más rápido.

    La decisión siempre es tuya, opciones te da la vida, tu eliges ;)
    Bikiños,
    Iago

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