Charades

Today I started classes! My school-the Centro del Lenguas Modernas and it is nestled into the back streets of Granada and I love walking up there. I am taking Historia del Arte de Espana, and Civilizacion y Cultura Espanola as well as an Intensive spanish grammar class. There are a lot of students from different summer programs in my classes and not so many Spanish kids. My Historia del Arte professor walked into class and began belting "Granada" a Mexican standard written by Augustin Lara. His voice was actually really operatic and beautiful. He continued with a slideshow of pictures of him as a boy, on which he had drawn and doodled in order to illustrate his interests and hobbies. I think I am going to enjoy him. Spent the weekend on the beach in San Jose, Almeria Spain...amazing little beach town. Unfortunately, now my body looks like a red tie dyed shirt gone wrong because I didn't rub my spf 5000 in evenly. awesome. I am finding my own ways to break through these language barriers like forcing myself to ask questions, spending time meandering around clothing stores just listen to the day-to-day language of the shoppers, watching the news with Maria (my Senora) aka watching Michael Jackson on the news with Maria- and reading my spanish book. But sometimes there is no breaking through at all...times when I have to pull objects out of my purse one by one, as if it were charades-in order to communicate with someone. I like it though. And everyday I feel myself learning. My ability to understand has already gotten so much better and playing charades is becoming less and less frequent.