Classes and glasses

This week (esta semana), I am repeating the previous weeks class (repitiendo la clase de la hace semana), however this is a good thing, because that sentence above says “me repeating the class from a week ago.” 

I said to the school that with two weeks left I need to focus on getting better at what I (kinda) know, and not trying to enhance my vocab and skills to the next level.

So it’s back to ser, estar, and other basics. One of my most common errors is I appear to think verbs are optional, and will regularly just forget them. “Yo Nick” (“I Nick” instead of “Yo es Nick”), Yo calor (I hot instead of “yo tengo calor”).

This is probably a combination of not practising enough, ADHD jumping ahead to the next part of the sentence, and the different syntax of Spanish. 

Weather

It's been rather hot here, getting up to 30ºC, not as hot as Sunnyvale in the summer, but apparently quite hot for Costa Rica.

On that, the weather phrases are weird in Spanish. There are 3 main ways of expressing the weather, and they aren't interchangeable! The verbs are "hace" ("to do" or "to make"), "es" ("to be", in this context "it is"), and "hay" ("there is"). 

• Hace calor -- It's hot, or I guess literally "it makes hot" or "it does hot".
• Hace frio -- It's cold.
• Está soleado -- It's sunny, which is also what that says literally. It is sunny.
• Está ventoso -- It is windy
• Hay viento -- It is windy (but literally "There is wind"). 
• Hay sol -- It's sunny (There is sun).

I think one of my biggest struggles at the moment is listening comprehension. Most of my vocab is written. I remember "estoy" is the personal form of "to be", and "cansado" is "tired". But when someone says "estoy cansado" I have to mentally write down in my head "estoy cansado", then lookup each word. With practice and time I will have that more directly, hear "estoy" and look it up by sound, not by written word. 

I can see! (¡yo puedo ver!)

In other news, my new glasses arrived. It was quite the journey. I do not remember if I chronicled it, but here it is.

Two weeks before leaving London my glasses broke (a frame screw came loose) for the second time, and I went to the optometrist and they fixed them, and I decided while I was there I'd get a new prescription -- I knew my current one was out of date. That day I got it (wow was it out!), and on discussion ordered new glasses with a rush delivery -- 48 hours, plenty of time. 

Long story short -- it was not, they didn't arrive in time, and I left London with a prescription and only a dream of new glasses.

However, I knew I could probably order some online with the new prescription and get them delivered to Costa Rica. I discovered a few facts on trying to do this:

1. Costa Rican addresses -- even business addresses -- are too long for almost ANY web forms. The FedEx depot in Heredia is Barreal De Heredia Zona Franca Metropolitana Edificio 1 B, Heredia San Jose, 10109 (The italitcs part needs to be on the street address). 
2. Very few companies even know how to ship to Costa Rica.
3. It costs a fortune to use FedEx or UPS or DHL to send something to Costa Rica.
4. The cheap ways to get stuff from overseas involves using a company that puts all the packages together and when they have enough, they send it -- so you have no idea when your stuff will arrive.
5. Customs will charge duty for anything you bring in, and the duty is expensive!

Solution:

I ordered the glasses and shipped them to my US mail forwarding service, they were then able to FedEx them to the FedEx depot in Heredia, they then received the package, and I eventually figured out how to pay the customs duty (online of course doesn't work, I just had to go to the depot and pay there).

In the end it cost about the same amount to get the glasses as their cost. Much more and it would have been cheaper to buy someone a return ticket to bring them to me!)

I would like some more nicer ones (I deliberately didn't get the really nice ones, in case they never arrived), but that will have to wait.