When the weather is nice, as it has been the past three days, I can walk back and forth to school. Today was the first day I actually walked to the school, but I have walked home from school each of the past three days. It is 3 kilometers from the house where I am staying to the school, which is about 2 miles. On the way to school it is a nice easy walk, since most of it is on a downhill grade. The walk back is a bit more strenuous, not real steep, but definitely most of it going uphill enough that I notice it. All in all, it good exercise, the sort I would rather do than work out in some gymnasium. The reason I did not walk to school the first two days was I went to the city center first for lunch and that is a bit more strenuous. It is only a kilometer from the house, but all down hill (which is not bad going into town, but coming back, it is a killer and to add that to the walk to school seemed a bit much, so I took the bus.) Riding the bus in early afternoon with people going back to work after their long lunch and with teens going home from school is a bit like riding the subway in Buenos Aires at rush hour: packed in like sardines! So it is actually more enjoyable to walk. Especially when the sun is shining in a bright blue sky with no colds, little wind, and the gorgeous views I have posted above and in the Kodak Gallery link below.
Also pictured above are the school, and the people with whom I am studying. The tall woman in the center is Antonia Morris, the other student this week, from Australia, who is on her "gap" year (a practice in English commonwealth countries evidently where most students after finishing secondary school take a year off before heading off to university.) The woman on her right is her teacher, Carina Falappa, and the woman on her left is my teacher, Ani Kanter. Both teachers are very good, very patient, and very gentle as they assist us in our learning and our practice.
One reason I walked to school today is that I had identified an Italian Restaurant near the school that seemed to have very good prices and I went there to eat lunch today instead of in the city center. The prices were much better, although I ended paying as much, because I went for a special, Ravioli de ciervo con salsa de tomate. This is venison stuffed ravioli, a specialty of the region, as we are in the mountains and deer are plentiful. It was good, although stuffed in the pasta, covered in tomato sauce, there wasn't much of a distinctive taste to the meat. But it was good and I enjoyed lunch very much. Another evidence of the quaintness of the town was the horse tied up outside the restaurant, which is on a rather busy main road and not really out in the sticks at all. It was the owner of the restaurant's horse, and evidently he rode in to work from somewhere. I wanted to ask him had he used the horse to go shoot the deer in the mountains, but that was way beyond my Spanish ability to converse. I was able to ask him what the animal was called, which he explained it was a caballo (a male horse) not a yegua (a female horse) and I was able to ask if it was his.
My Spanish is improving daily. I am becoming much more adept (still far from expert) at using past tense verbs and I am actually beginning to comprehend the use of adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns for direct and indirect objects. I still struggle to create sentences, but I did tell a small chapter of a story which the teacher began and asked me to finish. And I am becoming more adept at understanding conversations to which I listen. I find I do best at reading. Probably because I can take more time, I am able to recognize the words and verb tenses easier by sight than by ear. I would not say I am able to translate very expertly, but I certainly can pick up the primary sense of what I am reading. I took a tourist newspaper to lunch with me today to look over while I waited for my food order and I actually surprised myself in my ability to read it and comprehend what I was reading. I must say, I truly believe I am learning this language and will be able, with practice, to communicate with others and understand others in Spanish. I am amazed!
Enjoy the pictures of my walk to school by following this link: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=6d2p4u6.50t05coq&x=0&y=-frqww&localeid=en_US
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