Thursday March 9

Another full day! Today was a long day, but very good. I learned a lot in grammar class today, despite feeling extremely frustrated with the language. I was really to a point where I wanted to just walk out of class because I didn't understand it at all. We have just started the subjunctive tense, which is the one area that I have hardly studied at all in the past. It is all new for me, and boy, it is tough. There are three groups that we talk in in Spanish, the indicative, the mandate/command, and the subjunctive. The subjunctive is so hard because there are 16 rules for when to use it, and it is always dependent on the first clause of the sentence. Depending on the tense of the first clause, will tell you what the subjunctive should be. It's so hard, and there's so much to remember. We learned a lot of verbs of "influence" today, to express something with powerful emotion, and most of them I did not know, and have never used. Only maybe 5 of 20 can I say I know and use from time to time. Man, I think from here on out, its going to be a lot harder.

So yesterday we had English/Spanish conversation, and my head was just so full from class, going straight to the conversation time, it was a little hard to comprehend and stay with the conversation. It was still really good though, although I think we were all about ready to ring Guillermo's neck because he talked so much the other guy didn't get the chance to say much of anything. They are funny guys.

Tomorrow there's no class, and I'm so tired today that I'm taking the opportunity to rest up and just relax a little. We have cultural classes in the morning, which you can choose up to two to take. I am taking Latin Dance and Traditional Latin American Games. It should be a lot of fun to see how we all learn salsa, merengue, cumbia, and tango. It should be pretty funny, actually.

After class, a bunch of us are going to the Luis Palau event tomorrow night, pray for Helmer and Guillermo who are going and not Christians.

It's been an overall overwhelming day as far as class goes, but now I have a chance to do some extra studying and try to comprehend this new material.

Psalm 37 is really amazing, I read it last night.

Nos Vemos!

Bethany