November 9:

Today again we have no power...from 2-7PM. Great. So I sit here and type this on the little battery that my computer has and hope that it lasts until I am finished. I haven’t been online in what seems like forever because the new CIMAS building STILL hasn’t figured out how to set up the wireless.

Tomorrow is Leah’s 21st birthday. For those who don’t know, Leah is the person here that I like and get along with best here, and therefore spend most of my free time with. She is from LaConner, and goes to Western. To celebrate her birthday, we are going Casino Royale and getting all dressed up and going to the casino at the Plaza Hotel. Also, we ordered a HUGE cake (it supposedly is for 20 people) that is totally decorated and pretty, and it was $12. I’m pretty excited, it should be really fun.

Usually the assignments that CIMAS gives us are not that bad and don’t take that much time. But this week, in addition to having a midterm tomorrow, we were all given different stories to read and analyze (like defining characters, rising action, climax, theme and theme justification, ect). I tried to read my story today and not only do I not recognize half the verbs that they use, but also I don’t know what tense that they are conjugated in. So it will be a long night by candle light tonight with my dictionary trying to figure out what this story is about. From what I read though, it’s about feminism. Lucky me-it’s my favorite subject too.

On the brighter side of assignments, we all have a day assigned where we are the instructor and we have to plan an activity for an hour. My day is this Wednesday. So what is my activity you ask? Why Spanish vocab/Ecuadorian culture “Imagine If” of course. Just like the board game but with questions like “Imagine if Cheryle (one of my fellow students) were an indigenous group in Ecuador, which would she be?” I’m pretty pleased with my creativity with this assignment because the other student that has presented (who I also happen to REALLY not like) just had a bunch of “Let’s-conjugate-irregular-verbs-as-fast-as-we-can” for his day. And it was REALLY stupid.

And then a random thought…sometimes I feel like my Spanish is getting really good…for example I sat and shared my thoughts on graffiti to my Spanish teacher like it was easy and didn’t even have to stop in the middle of my sentences to think of the next words that I wanted. But then sometimes, I feel like I know nothing, like when Leah and I went to the bakery and asked for the cheesy bread with onions (which I have personally bought there before and my mom buys all the time) and the lady didn’t understand and told us that they didn’t have anything like that and that I must mean an Empanada. So we explained it to her again and she totally didn’t understand what we wanted. So I don’t know how good my Spanish is.

So while you sit here and read this in your well lit homes/office spaces, just remember how good you have it, and remember that I am sitting here trying to do homework and study for a midterm by the light of a candle.