Paddle and Mexican Spanish

Went to a place I've never been yesterday to meet up with a new friend, and found  myself playing tennis with a Spanish Michael Phelps.  In Spain, Michael Phelp's favorite sport is futbol (soccer), he doesn't swim, and he's in training to be a pilot.  And he'll play tennis with foreign girls and offer to teach them how to play paddle, which is apparently the new rage around Spain.  We saw a game being played when we left - it's played with four people on a smaller, tennis-like court with a ball similar to a tennis ball that doesn't bounce very well.  It's pretty much a cross between tennis and badminton.  But SMP has a court near his house that we can play at for free (free courts are difficult to come by) so maybe next time we'll play some paddle!  It's always good to add a new sport to my repertoire.

At the plaza where the metro station is, there's a giant statue of a horse and an angel with wings, but it was covered with a gigantic fitted sheet.  Very strange.  SMP said that he thought that the statue had been moved there and something had been broken, so they were basically keeping the cover on to hold it together while the glue dried.  Maybe.  Does superglue work on hundred year old statues?

Met another friend for a late lunch (late for me, on time for the Spanish) and was amazed at myself for understanding some of his rapid-fire Spanish, though not all of it.  Never all, sadly.  But still, we had a good time grabbing some bocadillos and drinks from a nearby shop (my wine was in a tankard and had ice cubes in it!) and chatting.  We wandered for a bit and I learned that a couple of my words are actually Mexican and aren't used the same way in Spain.  Oops!  I think I'm being totally understandable, then boom, they hit me with another form of Spanish.  But considering that the Spanish say coger el autobus for to take the bus, and how much trouble that gets them into for what it means in Mexican Spanish, I might just struggling around with the technically but not culturally correct tomar.  It'll save me from having to recorrect when I get back to California.

So happy weekend, all you working stiffs!  I'm going to really be appreciating the next two weekends a bit more myself, as I've gotten a temporary position covering for a language assistant on leave at a school in Madrid.  It'll be a great experience to see how I like teaching in Spain, but I think it's going to be an exhausting couple of weeks, with teaching during the day and classes with the family at night.  I'll have to start going to bed at a reasonable hour again.