A few followers of this blog pointed out that yesterday's video has a problem. Right after the first scene with Agnes walking down the street, there's five minutes or so of total blackness with no audio before the video resumes.
I suppose that these people never stopped to think that perhaps I'm creating an arte nuevo video experience. Perhaps that area of blackness in the middle of the video represents the hole in my Spanish language skills, and I'm trying to get my viewers to feel empathy for my situation. Maybe it is meant to provide a moment of reflection for the 30-year civil war here in Guatemala. Or maybe it's designed to make the viewer think and wonder, “I wonder what happened to that nice Korean girl who stepped off the curb in a poor country in Central America? She shows up later in the video, but what was she doing during that five minutes of darkness?”
Most likely, it's just a screw-up with my video editing skills. So, I've posted a new version to today's blog that doesn't contain a mysterious black hole...
Today was our third lesson. I had some sort of “Aha!” moment with my teacher, because I suddenly started to understand quite a bit of Spanish. I don't know how to describe it, but it seemed that something “clicked” for me. We were quickly able to go over the numbers from 1-1000, the names for basic colors, and how to conjugate verbs. Plus, I learned a whole bunch of new nouns. This must have been how Helen Keller felt when she first started working with Anne Sullivan! Fortunately, I wasn't blindly tripping over chairs and people at the time...and I bet my description of colors was far more accurate.
It might be back to “Miguel” for “Michael / Miguel.” The local population seems to naturally refer to him as “Miguel”...even when he introduces himself as “Michael.” I'm not sure what he can do about this, short of wearing a name tag or saying “No! Mi llamo es Michael! MICHAEL!!! M-I-C-H-A-E-L!!!” Oy, Dios Mio!
So everything is going great! We're still feeling a bit overwhelmed, but today was a really good day! Pretty soon, I'll be reading Don Quixote in its original form...
I suppose that these people never stopped to think that perhaps I'm creating an arte nuevo video experience. Perhaps that area of blackness in the middle of the video represents the hole in my Spanish language skills, and I'm trying to get my viewers to feel empathy for my situation. Maybe it is meant to provide a moment of reflection for the 30-year civil war here in Guatemala. Or maybe it's designed to make the viewer think and wonder, “I wonder what happened to that nice Korean girl who stepped off the curb in a poor country in Central America? She shows up later in the video, but what was she doing during that five minutes of darkness?”
Most likely, it's just a screw-up with my video editing skills. So, I've posted a new version to today's blog that doesn't contain a mysterious black hole...
Today was our third lesson. I had some sort of “Aha!” moment with my teacher, because I suddenly started to understand quite a bit of Spanish. I don't know how to describe it, but it seemed that something “clicked” for me. We were quickly able to go over the numbers from 1-1000, the names for basic colors, and how to conjugate verbs. Plus, I learned a whole bunch of new nouns. This must have been how Helen Keller felt when she first started working with Anne Sullivan! Fortunately, I wasn't blindly tripping over chairs and people at the time...and I bet my description of colors was far more accurate.
It might be back to “Miguel” for “Michael / Miguel.” The local population seems to naturally refer to him as “Miguel”...even when he introduces himself as “Michael.” I'm not sure what he can do about this, short of wearing a name tag or saying “No! Mi llamo es Michael! MICHAEL!!! M-I-C-H-A-E-L!!!” Oy, Dios Mio!
So everything is going great! We're still feeling a bit overwhelmed, but today was a really good day! Pretty soon, I'll be reading Don Quixote in its original form...
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