Story Time

    Today we had a midterm in my advanced Spanish class. We started with a 45 minute test on grammar and reading comprehension. This class is very disorganized. We've had multiple classes canceled, we take 3 days to give presentations that should've taken one day. We wait around for about 20 minutes everyday before class to find out what classroom we are going to use that day due to planning problems. It's supposed to be intensive Spanish practice, but I use it more as a way to make my next plans with my friends. Based on how much we've learned in the last week or two, I expected this test to be a joke with maybe some circle the right answer questions, but it was a little harder than that. The problem is that it's hard to test fluency and conversational skills on paper. That's why we also had an oral part of the exam, where we all sat around a circle and told Argentine legends to each other. Our professor provided mate, and we had a little story time. I told the legend of the lagoon that I went to this weekend, but I heard some interesting stories about the beginnings of mate, the zonda wind, and other old legends.
    My favorite was the legend of Gauchito Gil, who was a farmworker who had an illicit love affair with a wealthy window and had to join the army to escape the police who also loved the widow. He become a Robin Hood figure, but eventually was caught by the police and killed, even though he warned the police that if he died, the police officer's son would get sick. It ended up true, and now people pray to Guachito Gil for miracles.
    The legend of Mate started when the Guarani tribes worked in the fields and constantly moved across the land, but one day an older man decided to quit and stay where he was. His youngest daughter stayed with him to care for him, and she was rewarded by a shaman with the leaves to make mate, which healed the old man and gave him energy to take his daughter back to the tribe.
    Legend has it that the cacti in Argentina are tribe warriors who were ordered to watch over the desert. They were turned into cacti by Pachamama, mother nature, who also gave them thorns to protect them while they slept and waited for their commands.
   I liked this kind of exam; it's so much easier to speak out loud than try to write an essay. This way, you just say what you know, and you cant get stuck trying to find something to write on paper and you don't focus too much on the verbs and grammar, which will come with time.