Language Progress

A few days ago I had a breakthrough. I sat down at a cafe and while waiting for my food to arrive, picked up Clarín. Now I know what you're thinking - uh oh, he's hitting the pills hard. No, it turns out that despite the name and logo, Clarín is one of the main papers in Buenos Aires. As far as I know there are no addictive properties, though they do try to draw you in by highlighting key phrases which makes it seem like you're reading a gossip column about Kate Winslet and Brad Pitt when in fact you're reading about the latest homicide.

In any case, I picked up the paper to kill time and found that I understood most of it. It took some work, but what a satisfying feeling. It's a change from my current project of reading the first Harry Potter in Spanish, which has me simultaneously looking up almost every word in my 1,100 page Spanish/English dictionary.

I also find myself having the occasional dream in Spanish. This of course can be confusing when English-speaking friends pop up and I push on trying to converse in broken Spanish with them. When I wake up I inevitably have dozens of grammatical questions about the things I said. They usually bug me until half an hour later when I can't remember the dream anymore.