One of La Serpiente’s current favourite books is Made By Raffi, the story of a slight, quiet, longhaired boy who doesn’t like the rowdy activities of his classmates, and finds salvation in knitting scarves and[…]
Tag: spanish
Late night Spanish and a side of stress
This evening I had a Spanish class that concentrated on past tenses, which provoked lots of talking, because we got to discuss historical events like the building of the Berlin Wall ("¿por que?" "¿como se[…]
Cheesed
I returned to work today after a four day break, to find I had ninety more unread emails than when I’d left on Thursday. If we assume that nobody was daft enough to send me[…]
Meditation and Spanish practices
This evening I had a Spanish class which focused on non-verbal communication. I sometimes wonder if they’re swinging the lead; this wasn’t a lesson where they needed to focus on imparting lots of new vocabulary.
Squashed in Singapore
Today I went to my Spanish class, where we mostly discussed illnesses. There was a listening exercise where various people went to a doctor, with ailments ranging from gastroenteritis to full-blown depression, and in each[…]
Binomio
Tonight, instead of doing my Spanish homework, I fled the noise of the Chinese New Year celebrations (day 3 of 19) and went to Binomio, a Spanish restaurant on Craig Road. It’s a strange location.[…]
Too early
Tonight I went to my Spanish class after work. My Spanish class starts on the 13th of January. I went home again.
Spanish surprise in Singapore
I was taken aback at my Spanish class today, when a Frenchman expressed surprise that I was English and not Canadian, saying that I had no accent. After spending the last six years of my[…]
A series of hapless errors
Tonight I went to my first Spanish class for ages, and learnt the word "despistado" which either means"negligent", or "absent-minded", or "clueless", depending on how pejorative you want to be with your translation. In a[…]
To be or not to be
There are two verbs that mean "to be" in Spanish: ser and estar. As described to me, one is essential and the other is contingent. That is, ser is for describing things that you always[…]