School, Tomatoes, Sunflowers, and Knitting

Lots to talk about this post, y'all.

So this week I had three tests for my classes and I got two grades for my classes as well. Perhaps not surprisingly, I got sobresaliente in my grammar and conversation classes, which translates to an A in the United States. On my grammar final, I only missed one question, which surprised me and all those around me as well. I am not sure what my grade for the other course is going to be, as the professor did not give us a grade, but I would imagine it is good since I got 90% on the test and I never missed a day of class. So it should be a good four credits. HURRAY! Now I have until the 11th of February off. That Monday I begin my real semester. Between now and then I plan on doing some adventuring around the city and getting into all of the free places the city has to offer. I made a tentative schedule and I have something that I will be doing every day, so do not worry, I will be sufficiently busy.

So tonight at dinner, I went to go eat and I saw what Rufi had prepared for us tonight. I saw that there were raw tomatoes out on the table and some soup. For those of you who know me fairly well, you know that I do not like raw tomatoes, but think they are just fine when cooked with other things or when in conjunction with other foods. However, Rufi serves raw tomatoes frequently, so as to not be rude, I eat them. So when I sat down to eat today, I was actually really excited to see that she had cut up some tomatoes for us!! I had been craving them for a while! This country is changing me a lot, but I am welcoming to it.

At the beginning of dinner, we were discussing how one of my housemates, Jenna, went to do an intercambio today with this girl at a bar that had some sunflower seeds. Rufi is a huge fan of the sunflower seeds, so she told Rufi that she had a bunch of them today with her intercambio. The other housemate, Katelyn, asked what they were talking about because she did not understand the word pipas meant seeds. So I told her that they were pipas del flor de sol (seeds of the flower of sun, or what I thought would be a decent translation for sunflower). Rufi was impressed for some reason that I knew about sunflowers or something, and then she told us that when you are talking about sunflowers as a plant, you use el girasol or los girasoles (for more than one sunflower plant). After she said this, it immediately registered in my mind that this was a compound word, combining the Spanish words girar and sol to create a noun for the plant. The word girar means to turn and sol means sun, so combined it means that they are the flowers that turn to the sun or with the sun (at least that is how I interpret it). I found this to be incredibly profound because it describes what sunflowers do in their name rather than the English word which does not tell us much, or leaves open the interpretation too much.

Finally, after dinner was done, we were watching the television and some American movie was playing, obviously with Spanish dubbed over the English. It was about these people in a jail and there were women and men and this lawyer (who looks really familiar, but who I could not place) was trying to help all these prisoners to get out of jail. Anyhow, we were watching it and one scene was with these women sitting in prison, passing the time by knitting or crocheting. Rufi tapped my arm and when I looked at her, all she did was look straight back at me without exchanging words. I chuckled and said, in Spanish, "LIKE ME!" And she shook her head vigorously. I found that to be so silly and sweet.

Anyhow, that is all I wanted to update the world on at this moment, so until next time. Nos vemos.