Vale

Ok sorry that I did not post yesterday- life is so much different here that my schedule is all thrown off.

Those of you holding your breath can exhale now...  

Vale- it's a word that I love and hate.  I love it because it's useful as filler to make it seem like you are actually capable (capaz) of having a conversation with a spaniard.  Basically if all you say in a conversation is vale, you can get away with it sometimes, because the spaniards say the same thing.  It means ok, and is often repeated 3-4 times for effect.  I hate it because of the way it can chrush my feelings of spanish adequacy.  This happens when a salesperson (invariably a lady) finishes a long monolouge explaining one of her products to me, standing, nodding and desperately repeating vale at what I think are appropiate intervals.  I am not comprending, and she knows it.  So at the end of the monolouge, she finishes with a simple vale?- like "I said all this and you should understand it, ok? Like you poor, poor helpless extranerjo (foreigner)- I know you can't understand me, and you never will- There's nothing I can do for you but hope that you somehow get the point, behind all your nodding and vale-ing, vale?" It's sad- I can always get the general point, but am never exactly sure.  So I wait for the part where she tells me the price, pay and take my stuff, feeling very far from fluent.  

Now this all seems very triste- sad, but I then realize that it's only my fourth day here, and I am improving very quickly, and I haven't really started class- intensive spanish class- yet and that God is in control.  These are the days...