School for Pat, construction watching for Phillip

I started Spanish school yesterday. Actually, a more accurate representation would be Spanish tutoring. I met my teacher at 3:30 yesterday at the school, which is just three blocks over and two blocks down from the condo. In this picture, taken from our balcony, the school building is the three story building (brick along the lowest floor, white walls with windows on the upper two) that is just to the left of the rounded white roof of a church. A small water tower obscures the view of the corner of the school.

My teacher’s name is Sunny, a 36 year-old mother of three who teaches elementary kids during the day. She speaks very little English, but that’s good, forcing me to listen and understand Spanish. We didn’t stay at the school building for our lessons, but walked to a nearby park and sat on the bench. I’ve got a workbook that we are going thru. In the parts I already know, we go fast. (numbers, for example) I forgot about the difference between this, that, these, and those (4 words in English, 8 words in Spanish because of the masculine/feminine issue), so we slowed down. Today, we are taking our lessons on the road, as she wants to make sure I can communicate at the store. This wouldn’t work if I knew no Spanish, but I think it will work great for my level of espanol.

Phillip hasn’t approached any fishermen yet. He is too enthralled with the construction he can see from our balcony. I must admit, it is interesting to watch.  As is most construction here, the walls and floors are concrete, totally different from what Phillip knows about. OSHA would have a fit about their procedures, but these guys know what they are doing. Most of them wear hardhats, but there are no safety harnesses. The scaffolding would scare me to stand on it, but they scamper up and down it without hesitation. Except for just after dawn, a breeze always blows here, at times more of a wind than a gentle sea breeze. The wind was blowing when Phillip took this picture, and we noticed that the workers were swaying on their perch, which was just a bent piece of rebar hooked to the upright rebar. Not on your life would I ever take on this job!

For now, Phillip is content watching the construction (and going to the store for milk… those bebidas con leche use up our milk pretty fast when we both have two a day).

I gotta put a nature picture in. Sunday night, after dark, we noticed a fisherman with a throw net on the beach. We walked down to watch him, and came across this guy(about 6” long), whom the fisherman had just discarded, not throwing him back in the water like he did the small edible fish. Phillip thought it was a porcupine fish, so I came back and checked it out on the internet. These guys contain a toxin and are not edible. They are cousins to puffer fish, whose skin is even toxic. So, we can understand why the fisherman didn’t want him. You can see the spikes on his back that give him his name.

Last night (July 4), we actually saw fireworks! Our assumption is that some Americans here set them off. It was a brief show, about 6 bursts, but colorful. We did not expect to see 4th of July fireworks here! Their Independence Day is August 10.

Right now, Phillip is cleaning some more shrimp. We noticed the street fish vendor yesterday morning. When he came by this morning, Phillip met him on the street and bought a kilo of shrimp – as good and as inexpensive as the market, and we don’t have to carry it. So, I need to finish up this posting and devein the shrimp…. cerviche for me for dinner, boiled shrimp with a cocktail sauce made without horseradish (let’s see how it tastes with hot sauce in it instead!) for Phillip.