Monday, April 14, 2008

Learning Spanish - by Krista Cukrowski

Hi. This is Krista. Uhhhh…I just thought I'd tell y'all a little bit about our learning Spanish in South America. Our teacher's name is Amelia. My first thought when I saw Amelia was that she reminded me of the little bat (my favorite character) in the Disney movie ANASTASIA. She hops around the classroom, acts out "los verbos" for us, and on occasion will choose some lucky students to help her out.

On a normal day, she'll make us go around the room and conjugate verbs to different forms for about 30 minutes.

An example of conjugation in class:

Amelia: Hiciste?

Krista: Pues...uhhhhmmm….Si, yo….hico?? Possiblemente?

Amelia: MUY BUEN!!!!!!!!!!!!

To me, there are lots of Spanish words that seem made up. One of the best is "hablaba" (which means "I was speaking"). Hablaba looks like gibberish—kind of like the English word "suing," which also looks like gibberish.
OH! And you can't leave out "desafortunadamente" (which ironically means "unfortunately"). I usually forget a few syllables, which in turn makes people give me this *Aw-look-at-the-pathetic-mental-child-trying-to-speak* look. Sometimes we have contests to see who can say it the fastest. It usually doesn't end well.

For those of you who were wondering what we do for that remaining hour, it is my pleasure to inform you that we go over the 'Chapter of the Week,' and sing. Yes, I typed that correctly. We sing. In Spanish. Badly. Actually, the singing is my favorite part, mainly because I'm the one who gets to find the songs, purchase them, bring speakers to class, oh, and listen to the song a few times beforehand. It's kind of nice, really.

I really am grateful for Amelia, and her diligence in teaching us the "Uruguayo" way to speak Español. It really is fun! =)

6 comments:

lecroy said...

My French Teacher was a hyper little spaz too! Always thought she was about to wet herself. What is it with teaching foreign languages?

"If you don't understand what I am saying, understand my Body English."

Or is it Body Spanish there?

Autumn said...

I just emailed Amelia today because I rocked what we did in Spanish today b/c of the stuff she taught us.

I always tell people I was the little slow girl at church, the gym, etc.

Karen said...

¡Way to go, little slow girl! I'm so proud of you.

Gayla Herrington said...

I took sopapillias to Whitney's Spanish class today does that count toward learning Spanish?

Karen said...

Yummmmm... sopapillas! They make a flat bread fried thing here, like a soft tortilla kind of thing. It's yummy, of course, because it's fattening!

Anonymous said...

Man I wish that was my spanish class, but hey now we can have some conversations in spanish!! haha
:)
Whitney