amorousodious

Tuesday was an early morning because I wanted to get some tarea done before I headed to my internship at la revista RELIEVE. (It’s an online journal, their link is http://www.uv.es/RELIEVE/) There are four of us working for them from the center, but on Tuesday morning it’s just me and one other girl. Dr. Francisco, our supervisor, showed us the website, where almost everything is side-by-side in both Spanish and English. He also gave us a short introduction on how to use the translation software before he showed us what we would be doing on a daily basis.

Basically we are given a word document of an article that was originally in Spanish and has been translated into English, and a printed copy of the original Spanish article. We need to correct the translation so that it’s readable and grammatically and colloquially correct. Other times, we will be given things like summaries of articles that they display at the beginning of the article. I was given a copy of a letter that they wanted to send out to authors asking for opinions, and they needed it translated into English. After 2 hours I had managed to get the letter done, as well as both article overviews that Dr. Francisco gave me. We generally will only be working for 2-3 hours each week, so me and Katie, the other girl working with me headed out to a pastelería (it’s like a bakery) to get a snack afterward.

Katie had a neopolitana chocolate (it’s like a chocolate-filled pastry, I think we have them in the US too) and I had a barca de manzanas (apple tart) and we sat and talked for a while. We ran into Chrysten at the pastelería and we all chatted for a little while about our different casas (houses) and madres (host mothers). In Spain it’s extremely uncommon to have friends over to your house unless you know them really well, so we don’t generally see anyone else’s casa except our own.

After our almuerzo (I learned that in Spain they call a snack that’s between breakfast and lunch almuerzo, and lunch is actually called comida, which is different from in Latin America. So it goes breakfast=desayuno, morning snack=almuerzo, lunch=comida, afternoon snack=merienda, dinner=la cena) I headed back to the center to attend the taller de teatro (a taller is an extracurricular activity, teatro is theater). It’s a group of students, who want to do some sort of theatrical act, or other similar things are coached by the professors and then we’ll all present our acts at the end of the semester in a “talent show.” I’m going to be doing a skit with Megan and Heather called “Mulletillas” which is a word that comes from the Spanish word “muletas” which means crutches. Mulletillas are a figure of speech that you use to introduce a sentence, or other unnecessary words that we put into our vocabulary. Some examples in English are “like” or “well.” Anyway, there are a montón (whole bunch) of them in Spanish, and we’re basically making fun of them with this skit. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

After teatro I checked my email on the school computers and then started my tarea. I have a LOT to do before next week because of midterms, and then the week after will be the week that Laura, Melinda, and Rachel are coming to Europe on their Spring Break (I am PSYCHED!!! We are going to have sooooo much fun!) So I want to work ahead on my homework so that I don’t have to worry about it too much while they are here.

For la cena we had turkey burgers (most burgers here are made of chicken or turkey, not beef) and ensalada con arroz (salad with rice, a really good combination). Alicia and I both did tarea after dinner since we are really trying to do well on midterms.