Dirty Stopout

Last night was InterCambio night at Café Madrid. MamaDuck and I went last week after a break of many months, and I was keen to go again. Sadly La Duck has been completely overstretched this week: it's reports week, and that means that she has had to spend every waking hour, and several hours that should have been sleepy, in producing reports on her students. So she was defo not up for the InterCambio, but relished the chance of having me out of the house and being able to use my laptop to do more reports.

Yay! A green ticket!

The InterCambio was great. I talked tontería with many people, including Armando who I met last September and liked very much, Luke from Inglaterra who I met for the first time last night, and a Spanish geezer who works for the government and knows Zap and Rajoy. He confirmed my thoughts on the latter!

We were kicked out at 2 am, and Antoine, the organiser, said we could go to a nightclub: he could get us in for free. Well. I went. It was quite amazing. The place apparently has no name. You enter through an anonymous door and it opens up into this huge, beautiful space. It was jammed solid. I thought I saw a bar, but the twenty deep crowd was just too daunting. I found a room that probably contained a dance floor, but it too was packed solid. My dad-dancing skills remained unused, my audience unentertained: unless the sight of a practically naked brown guy with muscles dancing on the stage rings your bell. I wandered around the place for a bit, and then tried to find the exit. Man, that was hard. I finally got out, and stumbled off in a homely direction. This involves walking up Calle Montera (part of the red light district) and into Chueca (the gay barrio of Madrid: we live in Plaza de Chueca itself, it's very interesting!). I was amazed by how many people wanted to have my babies for a small fee. And I suspect one or two of them wanted to have my money too. Hah! Spent it all!

I arrived home at about 4 a.m., and awoke at noon today. I had a bit of a hangover, and as you may know the only cure for this is to drink more. Today has been an exceptionally pleasant spring-like day, and I was able to wander around wearing a shirt and a lightweight jacket. No sweater, no scarf, no hat. Fantastico!

Me mola Madrid.

Learning Spanish II [Aprendizaje Español Dos]

You know I was doing Spanish classes two nights a week up until Christmas? Well, I didn't go back after Christmas because I was broke and I wasn't that keen on the teacher. Recently I've started a new arrangement. A friend of ours is teaching me Spanish, and in return I help her with her English. She's actually pretty fluent already, but needs to work on her accent, pronunciation and the more obscure bits of the English language. I'll have her talking like a Northerner in no time.

When we first arrived in Madrid we went to an 'intercambio' a couple of times. This is an informal social gathering of random people from pretty much everywhere and the idea is that you talk to people who speak the language you are learning. It's good fun but I stopped going because it clashed with my class. We went last night and had a great time.

Also, I was searching the web for a site that would test my knowledge of verb conjugations. I couldn't find one, so I've started to build one. You can play with the beta version at testmyspanish.info/verbdriller.asp. Don't click any of the links: they ain't working yet!

Aprendizaje de español [learning Spanish]

Regular readers may recall that last summer, BetterArf and I did a 2-week intensive Spanish course in Valencia. It was hard work, but it was fun, and at the end of it we could burble away quite convincingly in basic Spanish.

Then we went back to Dubai and forgot it all. I had been hoping that being back in Spain and immersed in the language would result in some kind of learning by osmosis, but this only seems to work for babies. So, at great expense, I've signed up for Spanish classes two nights a week. BetterArf is also doing it, but in a more advanced class, 'cos she's brainy and I'm not.