The Post Where I Complain

Hi! Remember me? Where have I been???? I've been studying a lot (and playing with friends in town... but more on that later). Spanish is hard. I came in pretty cocky because I do so well in my classes back home and thought this one would be easy to ace as well. Boy was I wrong.

I'm understanding a lot more. I watched an entire Spanish movie, "Los Amantes del Circular Polar" without subtitles and got it. (It was really good, by the way. I recommend!) I just don't speak as much as I should. My roommates talk so quickly it's exhausting.

I'm having a hard time with all of these Spanish rules. There are FOUR different past tenses. Did I mention that? I have a complicated structure chart in my brain just to figure out how to tell someone about what I had for breakfast. We just learned about Preterite Imperativos, which is like commands or directions. They give you about 15 minutes to understand the concept then they throw in curve-balls. Like, the verb is totally different if you're telling someone to not do something. And when you say something like "Give it to me!", instead of being "Da lo me!" it becomes ONE WORD in different order: "Damelo!". When you're trying to break down the verbs, direct object and indirect object (which just made me throw up in my mouth a little to type because I'm so over sentence structure) it's really hard to understand, let alone make your brain come up with your own complicated little structure on the spot.

Plus, my morning teacher, Nieves, has it out for me. I don't know what the eff her deal is, but everything I do is wrong. The other day she passed out an assignment and asked us to read through it, which I did, but then yelled at me because I had a pen in my hand and it looked like I might write something. I'm not used to teachers not liking me. I'm attentive in class, I ask questions, I always do my homework. I try hard. WTF? And it's just me. Other people miss class, come in late, don't do their homework and don't participate but for some reason she singles me out. If I take longer than 2 seconds to think about the solution to something on the assignment she sighs, rolls her eyes and says, "You don't get it, do you?" and then starts to scribble the answer on my paper. Seriously. Gwenn asked me if maybe it was because I'm older, but there is another girl in the class my age and Nieves treats her like she's God's gift. (She probably is. She's a missionary.)

My late morning teacher, Rosie, told me yesterday that Nieves said I never participate and don't do my work. Rosie said she doubted that based on my performance in her class, so I'm glad I have some support. Rosie said Nieves has a bad attitute and that I just need to demonstrate my comprehension more in class. That in itself is fine (because seriously, get laid or get some prozac and back off lady) but I'm worried about the part of my final that Nieves is going to grade. I anticipate she's going to find every missed accent and little mistake I made and try to fail me.
So, to prepare for battle, I hired a tutor and have been studying non-stop, doing extra assignments and whatnot.

This morning I woke up thinking about Nieves and formed several sentences in Spanish telling her to suck it.

I think the tutoring is helping.