Due to the overwhelming number of requests for a post in English, I will oblige my anglophone family and friends who could not read my last one that, save a few sentences, was in Euskera. This place is awesome, primeran, un lugar encantador. So how am I doing? Well,…
The people have been more than willing to help with any problem, linguistic or otherwise. Today I did an interview with EITB, which is the Basque television and radio station. The video should be on the site within a few days.
I enjoy the classes very much. I have three classes a day, each one for two hours. Each class has a different teacher. Nire ustez, (in my opinion) the first class hits us with new grammatical concepts and is a bit dryer. But I enjoy that kind of thing. The second class is basicaly a continuation of what we were doing in the first. Then we have lunch, which is from 1:30 to 4:30. After eating you can take a nap, do homework, or get a drink in the bar. Then we go to the last class, which I think is the most fun. We don´t study technical grammar per se, it´s more conversation and practicing our Basque. Today we had to tell a story. Anything we would care to share with the class. I talked about the night we ate hedgehog in Donosti, and how I ordered three, one for each of us, as it turns out, we didn´t even need one. The girls, being girls, couldn´t finish this new and exotic dish. So I ate all three. Beer never tasted so good after eating three puréed hedgehogs. I really think they just killed them up on the mountain, maybe with a .22 or a BB gun, and threw the hedgehog cadavers in a blender and scooped the goop back into their shells or hard body or whatever the hell it was, still with the spines on the back. When in Rome, eat like the locals do.
Other than that, I go thru my day speaking three languages: Basque 90% of the time in normal day to day interactions; English 8% when I want to express myself in the every trustworthy mother tongue with my Megans; and I speak Spanish 2% of the time to ask for a translation or a ¨Nola esaten da…?¨ (How do you say…?) But here, everybody´s first language is Spanish, and we are not here to speak Spanish, so we do not have conversations in ¨Cervantesen hizkuntza¨ (the language of Cervantes), as our teacher Aitzol refers the the Castilian tongue.
Well, that´s about it for now. For all you fellow grammar nerds out there, we are currently studying, among other things, hypothetical situations and the subjuntive. For example, ¨If I had money, I would buy food¨ or ¨If I were smarter, I wouldn´t be working here.¨ Those are the kind of constructions we have been practicing. Eskerrik asko irakurtzeagatik (Thanks for reading) eta ondo pasa, agur!