6.2 Semana de cumpleaños

Hola de nuevo,

Cancion del dia

I was much behind on schoolstuff, so I decided to do them first before updating the second part. Here it comes!

This update is about the first (half) week in GDL after our trip to the east coast of Mexico, some viewpoints of Mexican culture also included!

Weeks 38 and 39 - 23.-29.9

After the beautiful beaches and sceneries, you guys can just imagine how motivated we were to get back to school on Thursday the 23th of September. Well, it ended up pretty well, because the classes (nor homework) weren't too stressful and the weather was really good.

The rest of the week was all about different parties, including my birthday party. On Thursday I was still on "hangover" and tired from out trip, so I didn't go out that day. On Friday there was another theme party in a posh club chalet, but I decided not to Dress to Kill, and went instead to play poker to a birthday party of my Mexican friend. I achieved a huge profit of 20 pesos from that night so it was a success!

On Saturday the 25th it was time for my own birthday party, which we organised on the pool of my friends, Sam's, house. I got myself up from bed from the previous night and accomplished to put my swimming shorts on at 3pm and the party was scheduled to start at around 4 pm, so I was in a bit of a hurry. After doing some shopping we finally arrived to the pool and a little surprise was waiting: The whole pool area (it's a common pool) with the table areas was full of Mexican families, supposedly there was a birthday party of some of their children going on. If the timing wouldn't have been this bad, it would have actually been pretty cool to watch because traditional customs, including piñatas, gossiping grandmas, lots of sombreros and so on. Well, we still decided to go for it, and achieved to get some space in the grass in the middle of scramming kids playing football.

The kids party didn't hamper our fiesta, mainly because there wasn't too many people coming first to the pool, probably due to the party on the previous day, and we got some seats nearby the pool and just enjoyed the sunshine with some piña coladas. The kids hitting the piñatas were actually really fun to watch and I really would have wanted to have my camera with my at that time!

Later in the evening we went inside the house and much more people came after 8 pm. Some guys even bought me a birthday cake and I sure had to try the Mexican tradition with it! It is about having your head smashed to the birthday cake, here's the result, por favor


Later on we left to Old Jacks to hear some live bands and it ended up really good! The only setback was my right eye, which reacted a bit to my contact lenses (or the cake) and turned totally red.. Well it's already much better now, so no worries!

On Sunday Susana prepared a birthday lunch for me and it was just so good, including a kind of soup with a lot o meat and vegetables, tostadas with guacamole and a fruity dessert. Susana's littlebrother, my "uncle", Paco and Diego showed me also how to play with a traditional Trompo (gyroscope), which is kind of their version of our yo-yo in Finland. They were really good at it, here's two pics of the fun

Paco spinnin' the trompo with his nail

Style comes first, right?

After the weekend it was time for another school week. Both days in the school went pretty smoothly, and I kept still on getting birthday felicitaciones. Thanks guys! On Tuesday evening we had another poker night, this time organised by a student organisation Conexion GDL. The night was really good until I started to drive home. I didn't know the destination where we were playing, so when I left there after 02 I just wanted to get quickly home and didn't check the routes too much. I got really lost and drove through the dark streets of Zapopan and Guadalajara for about 1h 30min before finally getting home. The most annoying thing was that every time I stopped to ask the right direction from someone, they gave me the totally wrong way and in most cases I just ended up to a dead-end street.. I heard this happens because the Mexicans don't want to loose their face and say simply say that they don't know now. The thing that wonders me is that what is the embarrasing thing about not knowing a route to somewhere. To me it would be more embarrassing to tell a wrong direction to someone and then later on see him return with a angry face.

That's what has happened so far! Today was my day-off from school, so obviously I haven't done much of anything.

Time for some cultural stuff! But before:

Ximena Navarrete

She was elected as Miss Universe of 2010 about 3 weeks ago. The funny thing is that she happens to be from Mexico, Guadalajara. I'm with good company here!

Climate in Mexico

First of all, Mexico is a really big country and there's a lot of different climate areas as u can see on the picture below
Guadalajara is located somewhat in the southeast corner the climate is treated as subhumid. This has meant so far that the temperature stays between 25 and 30 degrees in the day and in the nights it lowers down to maybe 20 degrees at summertime. So pretty much like finnish or European summer so far (when we get lucky..). There is not too much humidity and the sun shines a lot, even during the days in the rain season . In the coldest times of winter (October, December) I heard that the temperature goes down to 15-20 in daytime and to about 5 degrees in the night. So actually it can get rather cold here during the winter, but hopefully the coldest time shouldn't last for too long.

The coasts of Mexico are much more tropical than the inner land. This is of course due to the sea, but also because many inner cities are at a quite high altitude. During the rain season the coastal areas have a lot of tropical rains which are really wet but don't usually last for too long. These areas are also superhumid during the rain season, so sometimes the rains are a really welcome surprise. Here's some rain stats for geeks like me.

Mexico has also more dry-hot type of weather, mostly on the yellow parts shown in the map. In baja california it was rainy season, but it didn't rain at all and the land was pretty much deserted (exluding the green golf courts for American tourists).

Accents of Spanish, part 1: International

I'll divide the accents of Spanish to two parts. First part is about the foreign accents of Spanish and the second part on native Spanish accents. I'll write the second part sometime in the future, when I've got familiar with more accents than now. Please, don't take it too seriously!

Let's first take a look at the language tree of Indo-European languages - which Spanish is also part of. All the major languages spoken in Europe are pretty much on that list, including English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Scandinavian languages and others, but not Finnish. However, Romance languages (latin based), which for example Spanish, Italian and French is part of, differ from the Germanic languages (English, German etc.). The closer relation between the Romance languages in the language tree can be also seen in real life, because at least the French speak remarkably good Spanish for being French! In relation, the English and German speaking people with the same experience of Spanish have usually way more problems in understanding and speaking the language.

The language tree also helps to understand the learning process of many new languages. Once you have learned to speak one language of a certain group, you are in better position to learn also other languages in the same group. That is because these languages have better 1. Amount of similar words, and 2. The similarity of language structure. At the same time, you are able to improve your 3. Language learning process, and learn the new language better that way. Basic stuff.

Okeys, the theory leads us to talking about the worst spanish speakers and funniest accents. When comparing other Germanic languages with each other, I feel that Scandinavian people learn the best. This is because they have had to learn new languages since childhood so they have a good language learning process. The English speaking people have not, so their Spanish accent funniness ranks pretty high in my list. Other people from middle Europe rank in between Scandinavian and English, but German people surprised me by not managing too well. They have usually learned other languages, so that's not the problem.. maybe it's just that german language is so "hard"-spoken while Spanish is way softer.

When speaking of languages outside Indo-European group, I know only to talk about Finnish and Asian languages. There aren't too many similar words when comparing Finnish and Spanish, and that's why I find the words of Spanish the most difficult to learn. However, we aren't in that bad of a position, because the structure is basically the same as in other germanic languages and the way to say the words (spelled how ir's written) is similar to ours. The Asian languages are the tip of the iceberg in this matter. They don't have similar structure, nor similar words, nor too much learning process. These make them it really hard to learn new languages. By Asian languages I mean mainly Chinese, Japanese, Korean and treat them as one.

Time to rank the

Top 3 of the funniest accents of Spanish

Third place... BRRRRRRRRRRRR

3. GERMAN accent (schhh,rrrrr,...)

And next.... the beloved

2. ENGLISH accent (cumpleaños=cumpleiianjoous)

And finally the one that tops it all..

..wait for it...

yep, guessed right

1. ASIAN accent (wat?)

The English accent is the funniest to listen to, while the German the most annoying. The Asian tops them all, because you just can't understand what the are trying to say :)

As I said, don't take it too seriously. And no, I don't have too much free time.

This was my blog post this time, hope you liked it! All comments are very welcome!!

Saludos,

Kalle