(no subject)
Again, I find myself overwhelmed. I want to let my breath out and sign in relief, but it's still too soon. I'm so tired of holding my breath. I feel as if half of my life has been spent underwater.
I am reading Vonnegut's "Welcome to the Monkey House." I want to read his whole collection now, short stories, novels, essays, all of it. Johnathan told me a few weeks ago that I didn't really like Vonnegut, I just liked the "idea of Vonnegut", and insisted that I read "Harrison Burgerron" (I really think I am misspelling that at the moment). I started there, went backwards, and am reading the entire book. The stories are brilliantly clever. Anyway, in the story "New Dictionary" he writes about the non-existence of "like" in the sense of comparison, "as is", in certain versions of the unabridged English dictionaries. It really didn't occur to me that "like" was not intended to be used in that sense. I intentionally said "as if" in the first paragraph of this entry.
Over the weekend, I finally was able to use my Spanish skills out of necessity. It helped a great deal with my inhibitions.
It was amusing on Sunday, when Saul (a Puerto Rican man who was showing us around the rain forest) corrected my expression "bueno" when I almost fell off the rocks in the river and he moved to catch me. He said, "'Bien'. Bueno means 'good' and fine is 'bien.'" It amused me that all weekend the only correction I got on my Spanish was on something so simple. I explained to him, since his English was also more proper than my own, that in English we say "it's all good", and so I tend to say "todo esta bueno." Apparently, "todavia esta bien" is correct. It was great fun, regardless.
Btw, I just spent the weekend in puerto rico. There will be pictures on facebook....eventually. Maybe I'll upload my graduation pictures from Johnathan's camera while I'm at it.
End.
I am reading Vonnegut's "Welcome to the Monkey House." I want to read his whole collection now, short stories, novels, essays, all of it. Johnathan told me a few weeks ago that I didn't really like Vonnegut, I just liked the "idea of Vonnegut", and insisted that I read "Harrison Burgerron" (I really think I am misspelling that at the moment). I started there, went backwards, and am reading the entire book. The stories are brilliantly clever. Anyway, in the story "New Dictionary" he writes about the non-existence of "like" in the sense of comparison, "as is", in certain versions of the unabridged English dictionaries. It really didn't occur to me that "like" was not intended to be used in that sense. I intentionally said "as if" in the first paragraph of this entry.
Over the weekend, I finally was able to use my Spanish skills out of necessity. It helped a great deal with my inhibitions.
It was amusing on Sunday, when Saul (a Puerto Rican man who was showing us around the rain forest) corrected my expression "bueno" when I almost fell off the rocks in the river and he moved to catch me. He said, "'Bien'. Bueno means 'good' and fine is 'bien.'" It amused me that all weekend the only correction I got on my Spanish was on something so simple. I explained to him, since his English was also more proper than my own, that in English we say "it's all good", and so I tend to say "todo esta bueno." Apparently, "todavia esta bien" is correct. It was great fun, regardless.
Btw, I just spent the weekend in puerto rico. There will be pictures on facebook....eventually. Maybe I'll upload my graduation pictures from Johnathan's camera while I'm at it.
End.