First, Mary passed her Spanish Exam, which means that she is now certified as "fluent" in Spanish by the U.S. Dept. of State. This is a huge accomplishment and the culmination of more than six months of intensive language training, sweat, study, and stress. Mary immersed herself in Spanish by watching movies in Spanish, listening to Spanish radio, reading books in Spanish and talking Spanish every chance she got. She went to daily Spanish class and toward the end was doing extra one-on-one sessions to prepare for the test. I am very proud of her accomplishment. I took Spanish for eight semesters between the 5th and 8th grades, and four more semesters in college and she learned far more Spanish in only six months. Hell, all I can do is order a beer and find a bathroom. Now, Mary can speak fluent Spanish, she watches movies in Spanish (with the subtitles turned on in Spanish) and she even chastises me in Spanish. Most importantly she knows how to say "what is the purpose of your travel to the United States" and "may I see your passport" in Spanish!!!
Another stress reducer is that we finally sold my Xterra. We had it listed for months on Craig's List with no luck. We listed it on Cars.com (for $49.99, for the ad not the truck) and still no luck. We lowered the price on Craig's List, got an offer, took it and were subsequently flooded with offers from Craig's List, which proves that the key to getting lots of offers was to sell it. Is there a Murphy's Law covering this? We are now down to one car (Mary's BMW) which we will probably take to post. I am a little wary of taking a BMW to Venezuela, after all it fairly screams "I am a rich Gringo--rob me" while at the same time it also says, more subtly "I am a rich anti-Chavista - follow me, harass me, key my doors, spray paint me with Chavista slogans, break into me and steal my radio and bump me in traffic while giving me the Venezuelan equivalent of the finger." I guess that after a few months of abuse it will blend in with the other cars on the road and will say "I was stolen from a rich Anti-Chavista gringo."
We have kept our social life lively, even while counting down to the big Spanish Exam. We went to see Robert Earl Keen at the Birchmere and stood, literally, two feet away from him, in the front row. Here is a picture from the show, that I liberated from another web site. We were closer than the photographer.
We celebrated Mary's success on her Spanish exam by going to Club Iota to see a band called My Brightest Diamond (I would describe them as "interesting". It was a very enjoyable show, the singer is obviously an opera trained singer with incredible control of her voice, the songs were upbeat, but they did not rock my world.) On Saturday we met our friends Jamie & David Baker in Baltimore. It was my first ever trip to Baltimore and I must say I thought the city was rather pretty. As a side note to the trip...whoever designed the freeway system in Washington D.C. should be criminally prosecuted. Worst. Design. Ever. One example (I could devote a huge rambling post to this topic, but no one wants to read my rant): It seems like every freeway is named some variation on "95" so you end up taking 295 north to 495 west to 95 north where it intersects 395. It may not seem that hard to keep it all straight until you have about 3 seconds to decide whether to take the exit to 295 or stay on 395 while you are looking for 495 and driving on 95. Ok, one other thing. These freeways do not actually connect to each other, at least not in the traditional sense of connecting. It seems like the traffic planners had certain places in mind that they wanted everyone to go (and certain places they did not want people to go) and designed the roads to accomplish these tasks. Now, the places they want everyone to go are not the places that everyone wants to go, in fact I can't imagine why anyone would want to go to the areas where all roads seem to lead, but all roads seem to lead to the most scary 'hoods in DC. For example, no matter how hard you try to get from Virginia on 395 to 295 in DC heading to Baltimore, you end up heading into South East DC and exiting on Malcolm X Ave. Ironically, you can't get to 395 to Virginia from 295 in DC without being forced into the 'hood. However, if you want to get to the hood on 295, you are in luck because whether you are going north or south (or any other direction) and you get on 295...you go to Malcolm X Ave. Ok, another thing, the George Washington Parkway (GWP) is like a time warp. Once you get on you can never get off, but, and this is kind of weird, you can never get on the GWP either. You only get on it by accident, then you can't get off. If you try to get on, you can't. It is like a Zen lesson teaching you that you only get what you want by letting it go and not wanting it but once you get what you want you will realize that you don't really want it but you can't escape. That turned into a rant. My bad.
Mary and I are both in Con-Gen right now. It is a big relief after Spanish. Whew!!!
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