This week has been really fun! After learning a lot while at school in the mornings, my roommate and I come home everyday to eat lunch (la comida en España) and then enjoy the siesta (echar la siesta). This week, we have been able to enjoy getting to know our host mother and sister.

Our host mom is a nurse at a medical center close by and, normally, she wakes up and leaves around 7:30, comes home for la siesta, and then returns to work for the later afternoon. This week was a little different. This week, she had vacation so she spent her time cooking our meals (normally our host dad does this) and talking with us as well as cleaning the entire apartment in the mornings and going to see a few movies at night. It has been fun talking to her during the mealtimes when we otherwise would not normally see her. This week, we taught her that the temperature here (lower 40s) is not very cold. At home, it get's much colder. We tried to explain how cold it was (after having to convert from Fahrenheit to Celsius) but she said it couldn't possibly be -7 degrees in Fahrenheit and that we must just be converting wrong. When she finally understood how cold it was, she said she doesn't understand how anyone could live in Wisconsin.

This week, we have also gotten to know our host sister. She is about 30 and will be leaving to go to Australia to live with her boyfriend in little under a month. It is fun talking with her because she understands the difficulties of learning a second language as well as what we are trying to explain when her parents do not understand. She has been learning English for a few years now, so tomorrow, she asked if we could spend some time speaking English because she needs to practice before moving to Australia. We bonded tonight about the difficulties in pronouncing words in a different language. It was interesting to hear her say that the Scottish accent is the most clear for her and that an Irish accent is the most difficult to understand. She also gave us some lessons on how and when to properly use the theta when talking in Spanish. The best parts of the conversations were when she told us some of the mistakes she made when talking in English with other people. Because there are only 5 vowel sounds in the Spanish language, as opposed to the 16 in English, she has a hard time distinguishing between different sounds. Because of this, when she talks, she doesn't notice any differences in some words she says which has lead to some interesting conversations.

It was really interesting hearing from someone who is going through the same process that we are, just switching the languages. Hopefully, we'll be able to help her notice a difference in some words. Tonight we worked on the difference between pitch and peach because they sounded the same to her, but now she can notice a difference. I think we'll have fun in the small amount of time we'll get to see her.

Estoy es todo por ahora. Hasta Luego