So, as it turns out, Chromebooks (or at least my Chromebook) are startlingly fragile. I broke the screen horribly months and months ago and have still not replaced it with a laptop (although, obviously, am now borrowing a laptop) and could not be bothered to try another way to deal with this. ha ha.
Anyway, not dead. I’m sure you were worried.
I still love Spain! Only now I love it with a much higher level of Spanish and a stronger grasp of things like “directions” and “locations” and “how things work around here”. I have a whole life here – friends and stories and places I go and routines and adventures ahead of me. Plus, the whole “moving your life to a new culture” thing has really done a number on my brain in the best possible way. With any luck (and here, ‘luck’ means ‘effort’), I will soon be speaking multiple languages with…well, probably not ease, but something less than agonizing frustration.
On the other hand, I keep spelling things like the British do, so, that was an interesting change. I only even noticed it because this laptop has an automatic spellcheck and keeps switching words on me. All my textbooks are UK textbooks but…still…surprised.
I spoke with someone back in the States the other day who informed me that my Spanish is very Spain (although in all honesty, I have probably picked up more Catalan speech patterns in my Spanish than anything else – I actually said la before a pronoun the other day) and that I’m doing that th sound that people back home make fun of. I…had not realized I was doing this. Even with her saying it, when I said it again I couldn’t hear it.
Which, given that my career involves noticing the nuances of pronunciation and speech, is strange. I’m good at that! I can hear an accent and understand what is being said quite easily, I can visualise where in my mouth/throat my own accent is coming from and alter it (usually? this is one of the ways I learn languages). Hell, even my American accent is weird and atypical for Americans – back Stateside they ask what my first language is, here they tell me I speak very clearly for an American. “It’s so easy to understand you!” It throws (some) people off.
At any rate.
It’s different.
Vale. Hasta próxima!
terəbəl rôr 