Spanish is Hard

Hi friends,
I hope you are all doing well. This week has been one of the harder ones. It is week 6 of classes which means that midterms are here or just around the corner. Im not usually one to get nervous about tests, but when I am unsure about whether I even have the correct notes it's another story. I already had 2 of my 6 midterms. The first was grammar, which was actually pretty easy, but of course I made dumb mistakes (we haven't gotten them back but I know I did stuff wrong). The tests are out of 10 points (instead of 100), so if you make a few mistakes your grade drops by a lot. My second midterm was oral production and comprehension which included a part where I got to debate with Jon, a guy in my class, about whether women or men had a harder life. It was probably the most fun I've had taking an exam because we did some role playing (I was the wife and he the husband) and I said things like "Whenever I come home the house is a mess and youre watching futbol as always....Women have to do so much more in the morning to get ready because appearance is everything (obviously this is not a view I actually hold but I was going for stereotypes in this debate)" He responded with things like "No one understands women and how they go shopping to release stress and need to tell their friends everything. Here I make all the money and you just spend it to release stress..." Overall, I think I won the debate :-)

I expected that by week 6 my classes would get easier to understand, but I feel like they are equally hard or harder.  I've been meeting with my history tutor, Christian, once a week for an hour. This has been a little helpful because the information I learn in class gets reinforced but by the time I get to tutoring (after 5 hours of class) I am exhausted and have trouble focusing. Also, for some reason it is really difficult to obtain a syllabus for this history class, which makes it hard for Christian to plan what we should work on. Much of my free time is spent doing individual research to clarify my notes/scattered thoughts/phrases from class. It is frustrating to be in class almost half-way through the semester and still feel lost. School has never been this challenging for me!

This week I did have some good convos with Marta, and felt like I didnt have to think as much to speak Spanish and made few errors! I also received another pin for speaking in Spanish!

The weekend is here (I never have class Thursday or Friday) and we have a feriada (holiday) on Monday so 5 day weekend!!!!! April is a crazy month, 3 of the 5 mondays we have off for various reasons, which is great because then I can sleep in on Mondays, but also these feriadas make full 3-day weeks feel longer and causes us to have to make up for lost time in our Monday classes (note: classes meet once a week here).

Anyway, I am still so thankful to be here, but could definitely use prayer for not getting frustrated/feeling like I am terrible at Spanish, and for understanding more in my classes.

Thank you for following me in the ups and downs of this journey.

Chau for now!