New Year's Resolutions

Hi everybody!

How's this new year going? For me, quite well, even though I spent the first week really stressed due to bureaucracy. I hatehatehatehate it! But some hours ago I sent the last envelope to the correct address and now I'm happy to say I am free!! I am back in Salamanca and I'm allowed to do nothing but dance, read and write, because I already did my exams in December. Big YAY until February 13th!

So I have never, ever, written a list of new year's resolutions. We don't do that in Spain, nice reader. But some things just came across my mind and then I thought: "hey! I could do those during 2012! They are perfectly achievable in a year!". So this is my super short list:

• Learn Catalan. I know: nobody can learn a language in a year (unless you're the most intelligent person on Earth). But the thing is, I already know Catalan. I know I do! I can perfectly understand it, both reading and listening. But I never dare saying it's one of my working languages, because I always struggle when it comes to "producing" the language. Catalan is kind of similar to French and I can't help but mix them in my head. If I start speaking Catalan, I always end up saying things in French and so on. So yeah, by the end of this year I'll be speaking and writing Catalan fluently, you'll see!

• Become a translator and a teacher. Just six months to go and it'll be done. I just need to pass three more subjects and write a long Bachelor's Degree Thesis (on dance, nice reader! I got to mix translation and dance for the last essay of my degree!) and I'll become an official translator. Obviously, I still have lots of things to learn, but for now I'll be happy with my Degree thingy. The teacher will come later, because I'm probably going to work in France as a Spanish Language Assistant in October. Pretty nice, huh?

• Pirouette. I just need to be able to do some clean singles before I even think of doubles. I am getting better, yes. I can pirouette, but I just want to be comfortable and get to measure the amount of impulse that I need, both en pointe and in soft slippers. The round fouettés will come when I am fully aware where my weight is and where it should be.

• Always dance like nobody is watching. This may be cliché, but I have realised that I dance way better when I forget about everything and everybody. I must get to find this feeling every single time I practice.

• Work hard... in every aspect of my life.

Also, can I haz Lucía Lacarra's arabesque? Plz!? *_*
 Photo: Stanislav Belyaevsky

And that's pretty much all.
Be happy, y'all!

Ballet is French

When I was a child I was very normal. And as a normal, Spanish, little girl, I did not speak French.

When I went to ballet class, I used to learn the names of the steps by their sound. Actually, I think I didn’t know it was French, anyway. My mind worked this way: if Mrs. R said tandí*, I quickly pointed my foot. If Mrs. R said yeté*, I did the same, but separating my toes of the ground. No questions.

How could I imagine that those words had a real meaning and that they were in French? Nobody had told me! There’s no way I could know that my tandí was actually a tendu, which means extended; or my yeté, which is really a jeté, something thrown away. This makes things easier to remember, huh?!

It is funny that just some months before I stopped my ballet training, I started with my French lessons at the High School. I realised that I had a deeper knowledge of that new language than my fellow classmates, and most of all, because of ballet. You know, when you’ve heard many times that shanshmán* thing, you freak out when you realise it is spelled changement and it means change… But you don’t find it hard to remember! The same happened with many other steps: my padeshá* didn’t really look like a pas de chat until I knew I was doing a cat step. Same with my beloved padebugué*, which I still remembered when I (re)started a year ago, but I hadn’t realised it was a pas de bourrée. And finally that awesome gran ecar* of which I was so proud! Because, nice reader, there were some lovely times when I could actually do a grand écart! Unfortunately, those times are not here. But French is. And believe me: it’s making ballet easier and more fun (if that is even possible).

So… put a little of French in your lives. Give ballet a chance!

Nerea.

(*) I write the sounds just like I heard them when I was a child; c’est-à-dire in Spanish.

Boring holidays… but Brussels!

As you know, I am on holidays. I arrived to my village five days ago, and as I predicted, I don’t know what to do here. No ballet classes, no interpreting lessons, not even a single text to translate. I go to the swimming pool for an hour or so every day, but the water in León is cold, so I don’t enjoy it very much. I don’t really like watching TV, so it’s off all the time and I don’t have Internet connection at home, so I spend my time reading, which is nice, but I don’t like lying on my bed with a book the whole day. By the way, at the moment this book is “Haroun and the Sea of Stories”, by Salman Rushdie, if anyone’s interested.

But I have something to be happy about! Guess what! I am going to Brussels in less than two weeks! You know what? Brussels is a very nice place to visit when you want to become an interpreter or a translator, because it’s the capital of the European Union and its Parliament is there! Plus, they speak French over there, and it’s been a while (two years) since my last visit to a French-speaking country. As you may know, it’s my first foreign language and I feel really close to it. I want to “need to speak it”, if you see what I mean!

As regards my interpreting training… I have been doing some speeches these days, but maybe not as many as I should have. My headphones are broken and I will not be able to interpret a lot until I buy some new ones. You might know that earphones are not very comfortable for this… at least for me, they aren’t. Anyway, I am still using the speeches of our lessons. I can’t use the Speech Repository of the European Union without Internet. This is horrible.

Also, I have been doing some ballet barres on my own, but it’s not as fun as in class, because there’s nobody to correct me and I lack of imagination for the choreographies. As a result, they are repetitive and very boring. Another problem is the space. My house is big, but there are too many things inside and I haven’t found a single place where I can do a grand battement without breaking a vase. Not fun times at all.

I have the feeling that, when July finishes and I come back from Brussels, I will need the holidays to be over as soon as possible in order to go back to Salamanca with my friends and my studies. Until then, I will try to enjoy my time here, even though this is the first time EVER that I want it to finish quickly.

See you!

Nerea.

PS.: Harry Potter 7.2 will be out in ten days. I’m excited and happy, but at the same time I’m sad, because I don’t want it to be over! You know, after more than 10 years… it’s the LAST Harry Potter movie ever!