Dos Maestras

El viernes, 30 de enero (I meant to finish writing this and post this long ago and have finally gottten around to it)

Today I finished my first week with my second maestra, Monica.  I have to say Monica and Milena are polar opposites.

Milena is a foxy smartly-dressed 23-three-year law student who likes to make fun of fresas chicas, that is to say women who overdress and worry too much about their appearance.

Monica, on the other hand, is a fresa chica.  She alternates between all-pink days and all-purple days.  And when I say all purple I mean from purple fingernails, purple rings, a purple headband, purple earrings, purple eye shadow, purple lipstick, not to mention her purple clothes.  Sometimes I would look at her and think "wow, you actually are wearing all purple."

Milena was a good teacher, but truth be told, studying with her felt more like talking to a friend than being drilled by a grammar and linguistics expert.  Some days, we spent an hour plus gossiping.  She even tried to help me with my love life.  We laughed a lot and it was easy to go to class in the morning.  I was sad when I had to switch away from her services (we are required to change teachers at certain points in the program).

Monica and I started off pretty well.  She was a bit more of a nose-to-the-grindstone type of teacher and I thought that might be good to take my Spanish to the next level.  I had high hopes.  My nose might well be server by closer proximity to the grindstone.

Monica set to task on my sloppy pronunciation like a barber on a barbarian.  Reading a page of Spanish text could take ten minutes as she corrected my manifold mistakes.  Highlight-every-miniscule-pronunciation-mistake-I-make time could get frustrating after awhile.  Maybe I have trouble being corrected by someone who wears so much purple that they look like they should be thrown into a bucket and stomped into wine.  What’s more she gave me more homework than Milena did.  Most irritating of all, today, she tried to make a Jehovah’s Witness of me.

It started innocently enough.  We casually started talking about religion and next thing I know she was telling we to read the one true Bible and acknowledge the one true faith and stop wallowing in my pluralistic ways (I paraphrase).  We argued for nearly two hours neither of us giving much ground.  But besides being too match-y and trying to save my soul—which I had long since abandoned to the fiery pits of hell—I liked Monica too.