Saturday, June 4, 2011

Happy weekend!

Well folks, I took the Spanish praxis this morning and LORD, it kicked it my tail.  It probably would have been fine for someone who is more used to hearing and speaking Spanish on a daily basis, but I just haven't had a class since, oh, 2007 and I don't exactly live in Puerto Rico or Costa Rica or some other lugar maravilloso.  Basically, you go to this strange testing center where they have some sad little pasty man who gives everyone the same spiel about taking a locker key, emptying your pockets, and writing out a paragraph in cursive about how you won't tell anyone what any of the test questions are.

And then comes the part where the test chews you up into little bits and spits you out.  You wear a set of headphones, you try not to be uber distracted by thinking of how you might be getting head lice from said headphones (just me?) and then you try to ignore the myriad of things going on around you.  Like the proctor who kept creepily walking up and peeping over my shoulder and nearly giving me a heart attack - lady, I'm wearing giant earmuffs, quit it with the sneaky stuff! Then Spanish at a million miles an hour comes crackling through the headphones and you have to answer questions in Spanish about the Spanish they just blared at you.

The reading comprehension was fine - not super easy because the passages weren't your standard Mexican restaurant menu text (which is all the Spanish I'm used to reading on a weekly basis).  But had the whole test been that way, I think I would have been fine.

Perhaps the worst part was the speaking - you have a microphone attached to your headphones and you have about two seconds to come up with something to say in response to some more crackly Spanish they blasted in your ear.  Not to mention everyone is talking at the same time - it's like being in a bus station.

Whew!  Okay sorry, complaining over.  It was just an intense morning.  I'm sure my next two Praxis tests will be much easier for me, but wow, that one was more than I expected.

Yesterday, I was stressing myself out about studying and testing and all of those things, so I decided to do something I have never, ever done.  I mowed the yard.  I know, now you think I am an insufferable princess.  But I've just never done it - never been in my list of chore responsibilities around here or anywhere else.  You know, man's work and all that.  But yesterday, PB hadn't had time to do it, and the yard looked like Vietnam, and I was in need of a good workout and some sweating to get my mind off things.

And y'all, that was hard work.  But I've decided that really, I might like this aspect of "man's work" better than the stupid laundry and the dishwasher.  Seeing the grass get shorter as you go is strangely satisfying, and I realized that I was basically getting an awesome full-body workout while also achieving something besides just the act of working out.  I was a fan.  Only problem is, I'm not as much of a precision mower as PB is, so I need more practice if I am going to keep my job.  But that little story was to tell you to go mow your yard if you never have.  I liked it!  It was fun.  Shocking, I know.

And that concludes this riveting blog post.  Hope y'all are having a lovely weekend! I'm off to try to salvage some of mine from the grip of praxis-taking, praxis-studying (for next weekend), and bar lectures.  I need some wine in my life.

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