Spain—Day 6

First of all, I should say that I’m no longer sure I’m on the right day. Whatevs, onward and upward.

I’m having some troubles pronouncing things (also: conjugating things, remembering things, hearing and understanding things, and writing things—for now, focusing on the pronouncing). I keep putting the wrong emPHAsis on the wrong syLABle, like I just did right there.

That’s not so surprising, except SPANISH IS SUCH AN EASY LANGUAGE TO PRONOUNCE! All the words are pronounced exactly as they are written, and the penultimate syllable is always stressed (‘penultimate’ means ‘second to last’, you ignoramii). In cases where another syllable is stressed, that is indicated by an accent mark (such as with the word ‘íngles’). Super easy. Yet I continue to bone it all up. Ugh.

The good news is that everyone in my apartment (shared student housing with about 8 bedrooms) speaks pretty good english. So I can practice spanish with them and still have english to fall back on if I get stuck.

In other news, I washed clothes this morning in my apartment. We have a tiny washer on an outdoor porch, but no dryer. I had to hang my clothes up on an actual clothesline to dry. A clothesline suspended two stories over a courtyard I don’t have access to, so if I didn’t do it right I’ll have to do some spiderman action to retrieve them or wear the same outfit I’m wearing now for the rest of the trip.

What else? Valencia is the most bike friendly town I’ve ever been in. It makes the 2nd most bike friendly town (Portland, Or) look like a place that doesn’t hate bikes, but isn’t overly fond of them either. That was a terrible metaphor, but my brain hurts.

Also, people in Spain rollerblade unironically. They actually use it as a means of transportation. I guess the longboard hasn’t made it over here yet.

Spanish for the day: “¿Puedes deletrear?”
Translation: “Can you spell that?” I use this in class a lot, because I can’t always figure out what la profesora is saying.