Summer Spanish = FINISHED! [almost]

Hola mis amigos.

Lo siento por no escribo en muchos días! [I am sorry for not writing in many days!...or something close to that...haha.]

Wow! Yesterday I was going to class for the first time and now it's the Sunday after class. Huh?! For the first month of SILP, time crept by. My hour and fifteen minute lunch felt like three hours. The second half of class felt like it was in slow motion. For the last month of SILP, time flew by. My lunch felt like 30 minutes. The second half of class felt like a very fast race.

And now I'm here.

I do apologize for not touching base for a while. My last two weeks of class were stressful, exhausting, and challenging. Spanish went from fun and somewhat easy to difficult and somewhat terrible [but still fun] all in a matter of days. I swear I have had more headaches in the past few weeks than I have in my entire life. That's learning a language in an intensive setting I guess!

After many restless nights of thinking I was never going to make it, the final exam finally arrived. I did excellent on my oral exam and that's not just me saying that - those words came straight out of my professor's mouth! We had to pretend we were travel agents for a Spanish speaking country and then use the subjunctive tense to convince our classmates to visit this place. I chose Ecuador [I wanted Chile but someone beat me to it!] and I spent a night memorizing 12 sentences that I wrote. 12 sentences may not seem like a lot - trust me, it is/was/forever will be.  I kept a calm voice throughout the whole presentation and I felt happy with it as I sat back down in my chair! My written final exam also went well. It took me two hours and forty five minutes...but I passed! Wahoo! SILP is finished!

The last straw in all this Spanish business is to take my placement test tomorrow morning. I have to be at the 200 level in order to stay on track with my degree. Last week I was stressed, upset, depressed, frustrated, and convinced that I would never pass. Fast forward to now and I am feeling confident, prepared, and "CAN I JUST GET IT OVER WITH?"

After the test I had originally planned on bumming around for a week, reading, drinking coffee, going for walks, etc., etc. as orientation starts the 19th. But...why would I do that when I could go to TEXAS and do all that at the same time?!

Tomorrow night I am flyin' on outta here to spend six days in Austin with Jerrod. YAY. I am stoked to see him as two months apart has been no bueno. I am also stoked for weather that is above 70 degrees [it will be over 105 the whole time I'm there, probably]. It is going to be so much fun and it is a trip I am very excited to take.

For those of you going back to school within the next week or so, enjoy the rest of your summer break! For those of you that have not had a break, umm, at least you haven't spent the last two months trying to figure out all the ways you can conjugate five million different verbs in Spanish?

Adios!