It was December 2018 when I decided to stop taking Spanish lessons mainly due to my knackering schedule.
I thought I would never set foot in Instituto Cervantes Manila as a student again. I thought that finishing 32 levels of Spanish in a span of almost a decade was enough. I thought that attending C2 classes – twice – was more than adequate. However, I have since reflected and realized that I could work and study at the same time.
Two weeks ago, I found myself in Instituto Cervantes Manila in Ayala Triangle. Without any preamble, I enrolled in class C2.8 (it came as a shock that there are levels beyond C2.5.) and braced myself for a string of surprises that would come my way.
The first day of C2.8 was only a little surprising because my classmates, with the exception of one, are the same ones I had nine months prior. The professor was the same – the ever kind and cheerful Benito. The topic was movies.
Based on my meager notes (I came in 20 minutes late to class), Spanish cinema has had a tumultuous history where at one time it was said that, “el cine español actual es políticamente ineficaz, socialmente falso, intelectualmente ínfimo, estéticamente nulo e industrialmente raquítico”. It roughly translates to, “the Spanish cinema is politically ineffective, socially false, intellectually shallow (tiny), aesthetically null, and technically poor”. Just imagine my brain whirring when it saw the words ínfimo and raquítico. It almost exploded. I am kidding.
Then, we watched a cortometraje (short film) called Ana y Manuel. Benito made us guess what the movie was about based on the title. I hazarded two guesses, 1) it was about two strangers who met in an airport and 2) it was about a prostitute and her client. Then, it turned out to be about a couple where Manuel left Ana. Ana bought a dog although she was against having pets in the house. She called the dog Man (short for Manuel). I will let your imagination do the rest.
It took me a while to adjust to watching the film, or rather listening to the voice over of Ana. I missed essence of the first 30 seconds, which is an eternity in a Spanish class, because my ears could not pick up some words. Luckily, the rest of the film was a little easier until it reached the last 30 seconds where my ears just gave up and said I could only listen to ten minutes of Spanish!
What came next tested whatever Spanish skills I had that day. We were given an exercise where we had to conjugate verbs. This is my second least favorite type of exercise in Spanish (the least favorite exercise is the arrangement of paragraphs in proper order to compose an essay – which is usually over a page long). I realized that I forgot how to conjugate verbs in any tense. Hahaha. I had to wrack my brain to conjugate ser. I got 12 over 22 in that part. 🙂
It was followed by naming your own dog exercise. Based on the guidelines given, we had to name Ana’s dog like it was ours. I named the dog Watson. I said that the dog was Watson and Ana was Sherlock. The dog was a loyal friend to Ana and caused her so much happiness.
The last part was matching type. We had to match the sentence with verb in the past perfect tense and its pair sentence with verb in the past tense based on Ana y Manuel.
Like Sherlock, but without the cap and the pipe, I have always been decent at using the process of elimination and making hypotheses. So, I got a perfect score on this one. Hehehe.
My Quixotic adventure begins anew. There will be times when I shall wish to stay in bed on a cuddle weather Saturday morning, yet I will get up, wear my armor (clothes) and prepare my sword (pen) to slay another dragon (Spanish exercise).
Come and join me in my world of make believe. 🙂
For the beginning of my journey, please read Almost There, But not Quite.