Jamie Wakefield

"Do you know enough Spanish that you could write 1 paragraph in it next time you blog? Then translate it for us who don't know it. Just a thought, that way we can see the progress you're making. " Sure. Rather than pretend I know words I don't, I'll keep words I don't know in English. I could go to Google translate and look up the word but what would that show? That I know how to use the web? Es Lunes ! No hay nuevos estudiantes in la clase hoy . C ual es loco porque yo veo ocho personas testing en la manana. La clase en la manana estaba muy facil . Mucho review. Todos los personas tenian un bueno fin de semana pero dos o tres personas han trabajado demasiado . Mi novia y yo teniemos un traquilo fin de semana . Un poco tinto y mucho veo le tele y leyendo libres . En la noche de Domingo teniemos cena en el restaurante " Kourgi ." Wendy tenia pollo y para mi, buey, muy poco hecho . It's Monday! ...

Spanish class goes in waves. It ebbs and flows depending on the teacher, the students and how smart my feeble brain feels like being that day. At the school I am at now, we have the same teacher in the morning but in the afternoon, we have a different teacher every two to three days to get us used to different accents and speeds of speech. On a good day, I will be in a class of interesting, like-level students and my brain will randomly decide to remember everything I’ve learned about Spanish. The afternoon teacher will arrive with games and discussion that I find interesting, and I will have to rein myself in from speaking too much and dominating the conversation. I will leave with a smile on my face and will have had a great day. On a bad day, I will be in a class with listless, boring students or perhaps students that have been studying Spanish for a decade and are only here for the next few weeks for a review. And when I say “for a review” translate that as “to make me feel as dum...

Remember when you were a kid and you get to stay home when you were sick? How many days of school did you miss? I remember one. When you were sick, you were better the next day. Not so with today's new SUPER VIRUSES! YAY! I can't remember the last time I was sick for one day (other than a hangover.) No one I know gets sick for one day. It's clear that soon we will be living in a post apocalyptic Hell akin to Stephen King's "The Stand" or Richard Matheson's "I am Legend." Yes, the flu keeps getting stronger and now lasts weeks instead of a day. I'm on day 6 right now and can't wait for this damn thing to be over. I'm sick of waking up in a pile of snot. I'm sick of feeling like someone has stuffed forty pounds of cotton candy between my ears. I'm sick of coughing. Thankfully, I have yet to shoot liquid out of both ends as illustrated by my classy Spanish teacher. Thank God for that. Time for another Hot Toddy.

I'm sick. I returned to classes Tuesday and was informed that Madrid has been hit with a plague. Many students and teachers out last week. The lovely Montse (our teacher) talked at length of the malady, eventually drawing a man on the board with liquid coming out of both ends. Nice! Wednesday I started feeling like I was going to hurl in the middle of the afternoon class. Deciding I would rather be trapped in a bathroom at home than at school, I left class early and came home. Stomach was upset most of the day but made it through with no liquid coming out either end. Thursday morning I woke up feeling fine. Went to class and half an hour in started to feel woozy and fluey . Had to blow my nose every two minutes. Made it through the morning class and skipped the afternoon class. Wendy made me some Theraflu and I dropped into a deep slumber on the couch. I woke up and didn't know who or where I was for about thirty seconds. Now - answering email and updating the web site (You ...

Thank you all for the input, looks like I’m sticking with plan one. Classes resume tomorrow. Have I told you about my new couch? It’s very Joey and Chandler. As detailed a couple entries ago, Wendy and I worked on my house this visit stateside and got rid of two couches and needed a sectional to replace them. We stopped in at a place my folks recommended “Bub’s Barn” (funny huh) and I fell in love with the first two we looked at. One of them was a brilliant green, the other a sickening brown, but both very comfortable. The green one had recliners WITH cup holders at each end of the sectional. I sank into one blissfully and extended the feet, looking at her with a mix of joy and eager anticipation. “Cup holders are tacky.” Oh. Damn. We spent a good portion of that day stopping in at six other furniture stores and looking at what they had. None of the other places had anything that caught “our” eye. I saw one sectional that put the green couch to shame with more recliners, cup holders an...

Yes, two posts in two days, can you tell the Holiday season is over? I'm back baby, and I need your help. Of the following two plans, which is smarter? The current plan is for the primary focus to be learning Spanish (and trust me, the “learn Spanish” part is immutable) and then get back to writing. Of course the web site would be updated sometimes and I would be transcribing notes for the upcoming book “I’m not an alcoholic, I’m just European” but none of that would see Lulu print (re – Quest for the Pro Tour.) See, under the current plan, everything I have written is going to sit on my hard drive for months. But when it is published it will be much more refined. A man who shares my love of UFC and I assume Magic, Chris McMahon, has become my editor. And the amount of editing I need is staggering. The man has an excellent eye for detail and I think we’re up to revision five of “Quest for the Pro Tour” now, with a ways to go yet. (Note – “Quest for the Pro Tour” was formerly publis...

You have to be joking. My last update was in November? I suck. (As you read this entry, keep track in your mind all of the things we did in three short weeks.) Wendy and I returned to the states in early December. She’s legal now so she had to get a bunch of stuff done for her Visa which involved going down to Boston twice and up to Burlington thrice. And of course, since I’m a man, I hadn’t done any Christmas shopping so Josh and I went up to Burlington again one day without Wendy to take care of that. Then it was up to Burlington again for dinner with Hilary and Michele and more shopping. And then we decided we needed a new couch so we drove around Vermont looking for the best one. I used to drive 4 miles to work and home again. That was usually it. In the three weeks we were home I put the equivalent of 97 weeks of work worth of mileage on my car. As always when we return to the states, it is almost never endingly busy. There’s a lot to do. This trip home’s primary job was fixing up...