Lemon knees and other language thoughts

We are getting better at Spanish. It happened without us really realizing it. I bet if we compared our starting selves to our now selves, there would be a huge improvement, but it's hard to see with everything in between.

We've discovered that watching argentine soap operas are a really good way to practice. Not only do they give you examples of argentine accents and inflections, they teach you useful phrases such as "I only have 2 months to live." and "You killed your own son."

We are forgetting english. You should see how many words are crossed out in my journal because they are misspelled. Yesterday, I forgot the word "pavillion". 

We find ourselves goggling at how bad some people's spanish is.

Nonetheless, we know we have a long way to go. We have many successes but we are also humbled most utterly more often than not.

A few weeks ago I asked my boss for some lemon knees. Didn't know lemons had knees? He didn't either. I actually wanted to ask for some lemon slices (rodajas de limon) but instead I said rodillas de limon (lemon knees). I know they're not super close but still.

Learning spanish has made me look at language in a different way. It seems to me that every language was invented because of the need to express feelings. And all the feelings are the same. You can say "What is that?" or you can say "Que es eso?". They're different words but they spring from the same feeling. For some reason, that is just fascinating to me. I feel like there are implications there but I'm not sure what of.

It's amazing that so many languages exist and that we humans have the capacity to put meaning to symbols and sounds and process them so fast that they actually work (well, most of the time).

Lonely Blog

Ok, so we really suck at this blog thing.

I think maybe it's a good thing. I think it's a sign we've settled into real life. People don't blog in real life. We don't feel so much like outsiders anymore, commenting on the strange behavior of the natives. We are the natives, and the behavior isn't so strange anymore.

But it is sad to come to our blog and realize we haven't written a single word in almost a month.

So....here goes.

Gabby got invited to go on a trip to Cordoba with her co-workers. She couldn't believe that they liked her that much! It was an 11 hour bus ride and 3 days with non-stop spanish. Her brain almost exploded but it was such a great opportunity to practice.

Mike, Ellen, Garth and Cindy are here to visit. Sarah and Andrea are going with them to Mendoza, the famous wine province for a few days starting tomorrow.

Sarah and Andrea have been going to salsa classes regularly and Gabby, tango. They all couldn't resist buying special dancing shoes just for the occasion. Sarah and Andrea even had theirs custom made and they should be ready in two more days.