mi espanol enfermo

I should have started my Spanish weeks ago, but instead I started a day before I leave. Oh well. I rely on Anna too much for her Spanish I guess. I found in Costa Rica I could understand a great deal of it with my French background, I just couldn’t speak anything back. Baja is a different story. I understand very little Spanish there. It is way too fast and the words are run together.

I’ve been meaning to do the whole community college class for the past three years, but something always gets in my way. Software and tapes it is then. I started out on Rosetta Stone a month back, but gave it up fairly quickly. It seemed to just be teaching me how to say crap like, “the blue car ran over the red dog”. Over, and over again. Maybe that’s the way the brain learns the best (interactive repetition) but I seemed to get much more out of 30 minutes of Michel Thomas this morning. He goes right for the core of the language and focuses on that. It is definitely harder to keep up to speed with him than the Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur, but I seemed to get much more out of the time spent.

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Most of what I know of Lawrence is from the glossy movie. It seems his writing is getting another look these days: Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom,” tells how a 1917 Arab revolt against Ottoman rule – which he helped to organize – crippled Turkish supply lines in Arabia with guerrilla raids. It was No. 2 of 100 recommended books for US commanders in Iraq.

Dick gets some questions from U.S. soldiers: “Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?” Wilson asked. A big cheer arose from the approximately 2,300 soldiers in the cavernous hangar who assembled to see and hear the secretary of defense. Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.

It was suspected before, but looks like it is official: Ukraine’s Yushchenko victim of bio or chemical agent