Classes

Having a lot of fun with my classes. Just started taking Spanish at CHICLE. Last week I tried the group class but my spanish is so messed up that I thought it would be better for me to take private classes. I think it's going to work out really well. My teacher's name is Alejandro, he says my spanish writing is really good (meaning spelling). He kept asking me to stop him if I don't understand throughout the whole class but I think I may have stopped him once (or maybe twice) so finally after him telling me to stop him for the 4th time if I didn't understand I told him that part of my problem was that I practically understood everything he was saying, just couldn't speak at the same pace he was. He seems really awesome, we talked the whole time about my living abroad as it's something he says he's wanted to do forever but never really gotten past Europe so he was fascinated to hear my view of things (even though it took me a little bit to get it out sometimes). I'm really excited to be finally back to Spanish and hope it can get back to where it was. My homework for next time is to try and sell him on Dali. He's going to pretend to give me funds for a Dali museum and I have to convince him that it's worth giving the funds to. I love Dali so I think I'm going to enjoy this, actually currently reading his book Diccionario Privado (Private Dictionary) which is a compilation of his definitions of different words. It's super interesting (although in Spanish).

Unlike Spanish where the whole class is basically a conversation deal (and therefore a bit more relaxed), Chinese is a bit more formal as I'm trying to learn to read. It's going better than it was now but I'm definitely looking forward to taking class with the new teacher (they're going to put me on one hour with the old teacher and one hour with the new one that I don't know yet).

Sign Language is doing great, I've got a silent dinner to go to tomorrow and I'm a bit nervous about it cause I don't know that I'm ready to sit and have conversations with the hearing impaired in sign language only. It seems a bit intimidating honestly so I'm going to study again tonight.

An awesome day ... in some respects

I had a really great day today. This week has been a bit of a struggle, I had a nightmare half way through the week about a man wearing one of those black cloaks (sp?) from Harry Potter (the ones where he can put it on and no one else can see him). Only the man was a stranger in my house and was about to do something bad to me. I woke up sweating at that point and had to turn the light on. I also noticed (not surprisingly) that my neck hurt a bit.

Yesterday we got a duvet (finally). I'm really happy about it cause that's what we're both used to now, Cam's not good with sheets most of the time (as in he doesn't use them) and we both move around so much it's practically useless not to have a duvet. For those of you who may not know a duvet is where you have your comforter in a sheet so you can clean it very easily. It's really nice. We also got a router for the Internet but it's Net Gear (apparently not a well known brand and definitely not recommended). I tried it many a time on the computer and it wouldn't install once. So now I'm going to trade it in for Linksys.

Today Richard, Sara, Margo and I went to Margo's synagogue for a lecture by David Gilbert on his book Stumbling on Happiness. It was an awesome lecture about how different things make people happy or not. It was interesting because he did most of it from a scientific point of view as to what makes you happy. For example, he said that if you go to a no-hitter baseball game and your team wins at the bottom of the 9th with a home run you have scientifically wasted your time as you spent 90% of the game completely bored to tears. However, the person who went to see that game may think to themselves that it was the best game they'd ever seen as they only remember that last part of the game going away from it. It's a bit hard for me to explain but I really enjoyed the lecture, he had a lot of really funny references and examples and definitely knew his audience really well. I would suggest you read the book as that's what I want to do myself. I started it before going to the lecture but didn't have time to finish it.

After the lecture we picked Cam up and went to Breadmen's for lunch before going to the Carrboro Music Festival. The festival was really awesome, I think it was quite fun for Cam (and the rest of us) to be able to walk around and see everyone else outside, selling books, having a bake sale, selling homemade lemonade and just chilling all over town as they listened to different music groups. We walked around and heard groups at 5 or 6 different venues. At one of the venues there were two people there with hula-hoops and they were passing them around for the crowd to use so we got to see people from kids all the way up to older adults. It was a very festive place and definitely more people than I've seen in Carrboro in a while. They had Weaver Street closed off as a walking street which was pretty nice.

Fighting

For some reason it really is true, "sometimes you fight because you love too much." I've never gotten into as many fights with anyone else besides Cam. He's warning me sometimes not to be like employees that we see sometimes who have a big temper but I'm never really in a bad mood when I work. Sometimes bosses can piss me off but I never blow up at them (as we can't of course). And I've never gotten angry at a student in my life even though they can be extremely annoying sometimes and I've had to ignore them or discipline them at times. The only people I've ever fought with are the ones I love. When I was younger (and even to this day sometimes) I fought with my mother mostly. Then in college I fought with a really good friend of mine. Now I fight with Cam. He makes me so angry sometimes I want to scream (and sometimes do) and I know I do the same to him at times too. It's kind of a strange way to deal with love, not really sure how it started but it's true. I am looking at some other blogs tonight about this and one comment I saw was:

There's a saying in Spain that translates to, "lovers who fight, are lovers who love..."