I'm not the only one here living with the M family in order to learn Spanish - there are two others here with me. Our intent while here is to have at least one Spanish class everyday. We'll often have two classes a day. In the morning the classes take place in the living room. However, the afternoon classes often times must take place in the car on the way to someone's house, to church, to the mall, or to the pool.
Classes generally consist of reading the Bible, listening to Spanish news, and singing hymns. We work hard on perfect pronunciation, fluent speaking, and how to listen and understand. We've done many exercises to try and perfect our vowel sounds and our "t's" and "d's."
I've been learning more and more about the Spanish culture as the family shares with me. Mexican's are very social people. They're always sure to greet everyone at church and those they pass on the sidewalk. They're also very giving. They love to share and give up their own in order that other's may be happier. They love parties as well and make the yummiest food!
These are "flautas." They are so very delicious!
They're perfect with lettuce, salsa, guacamole, and cheese
Hermana M feeds us the most delicious Mexican food. Now I realize how completely wrong Taco Bell is. :/ A few things we Americans do have right about Mexican food is that it's usually very spicy. However, there is much more to it than that! For example, almost every meal includes baked beans (think re-fried beans). They make the beans themselves and prepare them in whatever way is preferred. Sometimes they smoosh the beans so that the beans can be spread onto sandwhich bread or tortillas. Otherwise, they keep the beans whole and eat them on the side.
I also never saw or ate any ground beef with taco seasoning. The normal taco meat that you think of is non-existent in their culture. Their taco meat was more often chicken than anything else. Their tortilla shells are also generally corn tortillas. However, I did eat the #1 best flour tortillas in all the world made from scratch by a Mexican lady from church.
Another awesome treat was there was always fresh salsa ready for every meal. Hermana M made the salsa from scratch so it sometimes varied in flavor (the variety comes from the various chiles she used).
I've been learning more and more about the Mexican culture as the family shares with me - how they think and breath. Hermana M feeds us the most delicious Mexican food. We never lack homemade Mexican salsa.
Hermana M gives ESL lessons to the baseball players nearby. It was quite the experience to go to her first class of about 10 players from Spanish speaking countries like the Dominican and Venezuela. They loved to talk and laugh with each other. Hermana M gave us interns about 5 or 10 minutes to teach our own group of players. I had a group of four students with whom I was able to ask simple questions. After this class we went to another one, but with Asian students. Though they obviously didn't speak Spanish, it was still an awesome experience to watch them struggle to learn English and realize that I was in their same boat, but with Spanish. The whole class day was quite inspiring. It made me want to sign up for ESL classes at school right away and devote my life to teaching English as a second language.
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