Spanish - my mother tongue

After finding my way into Cusco last night from my new home, I spent a couple of hours in the house on my own, with the wind whistling through the single paned glass windows (with a bit of tape stuck around it to keep them together/or the air out) watching a bit of Spanish TV.  My host mum, Monica is such a wee doll and made me feel so at ease.  Speaking English helped a lot too.  Her husband is in Lima and will be back on Wednesday.  I met the other German guy too..was waiting for a tall, blond, handsome man to enter the building..but was small, still blond, over 50 and married, but still a lovely man!  He's in the same school as me studying also which is great.


Awoke this morning for brekkie and it is the school's policy that the host family converse in Spanish as much as possible so that students are immersed into Peruvian culture at once.  Well, it was fun! Spending 7 weeks travelling it is easy enough to pick up lots of Spanish spoken and written words as you see and hear it all the time, so when she spoke slowly I could understand bits of it, but had no idea how to reply..saying "no lo se" (probably spelt wrong)..which means "I don't know". I was able to translate what she said back into English to her.  Suppose that defeats the purpose, but I like to think this host family business works both ways.. afterall, I'm helping her with her English!


Walked to the school with Ralf for classes at 8.30am.  When we got there we had to sit a placement test.  Holy God, I thought it may have basics in it with Hola, como esta etc in which I could reply to them easily enough, but no, it had all these verbs which had to be conjugated and questions I had no idea what the hell they were asking me.  6 of us started this morning and sat the test.  Thankfully there was another Belgian girl in exactly the same position as myself who knew nothing.  All the both of us managed to get answered was our name, our nationality and today's date.  The director of the place noticed us having bother and took our tests off us, led us to the waiting area, where we had to wait at least 40 minutes for the rest to finish their tests!  So, tomorrow at least there are two of us in the beginners class.  We also get to meet up with the ones who've been studying in the school for the last few weeks/months and they plan nights out and weekends away.


The teachers in the school are lovely and so friendly and have made everyone so welcome. They gave us the usual orientation walk around the school and Cusco - it was in Spanish though, so of course, myself and the Belgian girl were pretending we knew what was going on.


Tonight we have all decided to meet up tonight for a few 'bebidas' or 'cervesas'..very important words to know in Spanish...so much for less of the frequenting of pubs - but needs must and it's a new crowd of people, so you can't be seen to be rude. Hasta luego!