los trabalenguas

in other words, tongue twisters. you know..."peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers" or "sally sells seashells by the seashore." So everyone knows that the spaniards can do some crazy shit with their tongues when they talk. That "rrrrrr" sound that is just so goddamn hard to do for an american. well, apparently it isn't just natural for them either. just like we have tongue twisters in the good ol' united states of america, spaniards create them for a purpose. apparently when kids are little their parents teach them this "trabalengua" to help them get that beloved "rrrrrr" sound. I'll bold where the "rrrrrr" is supposed to come in. Here goes:

"El perro de Sanroque no tiene rabo porque Ramón Ramirez se lo ha cortado." try saying that 3 times fast. this is the stuff i'm learning over here. sorry mom and dad, class isn't teaching me anything. these lovely tidbits of information come from my dear host brothers.

On that topic of my host family, I learned an alternate version of the card game "bullshit" last night. you know the one where you get to yell out "bullshit!" when you think someone puts down a card other than what they say it is? In spain it's called "mentira" which just means liar- a lot less fun to say. they also have different rules, which was hard to get used to. needless to say, i lost miserably to mis hermanos, but it was a grand time all the same. finally betsy and i feel comfortable around them and in our homestay, especially when the whole family comes to visit! (once a week the relatives come and we have a massive dinner of lots of delicious persian food. i couldn't be happier on these nights.)

other than that, not much is new. class is such a small part of my experience here that it's not even worth talking about. we'll see if that changes in a couple weeks when i actually matriculate and take real classes, just in a whole different language. pshhh, piece of cake.

viva la vida.