Greg

l'italiano imparante è divertimento, se una punta lenta

I have this great theory that we should learn italian before we go to Italy.  And yes, this is largely related to our inability to speak Spanish while in El Salvador...  The trouble?  I don't think we're putting in nearly enough time to make decent progress.  When we were in school, it was a few hours a week (sadly, I'm having trouble recalling if we had language classes EVERY day or just two or three times a week).  Right now, I'm probably spending an hour a week MAYBE two - clearly more time and effort is required.

How are we proceeding?  I got the Rosetta Stone software for learning Italian the other day and have been using it on a quasi-regular basis.  The "how good is your accent/pronunciation" part of the software is really cool, even if it is possible to skip by with a few errors in what you've just said...  The rest of it is also pretty good, even if the only thing I really know at this point is how to say "the {fish|dog|car|airplane} is {white|red|new|old}".  I'm presuming more vocabulary to come once I finish lesson 1

The latest attempt to bootstrap my vocabulary is sitting on the dining room table - I bought an Italian newspaper and am planning on going through and trying to read at least one section, translating as I go.  We'll see how long this lasts before I finish that section or give up entirely

random notes on eating out on the eastside

Note #1 - I'm sticking around for a conference call later on tonight, so ran over to the Crossroads Mall food court for some dinner.  Suprisingly, the BBQ joint in the mall (Jones BBQ - Seattle Weekly writeup) has pretty decent BBQ.  I wouldn't write home about it (though, technically if someone from home reads this I kind of am ;-)), but it does the job.  In the past I had tried their ribtips and was not too impressed, but it was my first ribtip experience; I think it was more a reflection of not being impressed with ribtips then a negative comment on their food.

Note #2 - when someone orders a ridiculous amount of food, please warn them!  I ordered a sufficient quantity of food to feed two or three people and the lady behind the counter didn't even blink.  Who eats that much on their own?  Seriously.

Relying too much on flaky technology?

My luggage finally arrived over the weekend.  Delivered to me, that is.  Apparently it actually made it to Seattle the same day that I did, just on a later flight.  Unfortunately for the next few days my cellphone didn't tell me I had missed calls or that voicemails were piling up :(.  I discovered that Alaska Air had left me a few voicemails - at least they were polite (unlike when Lowes had to leave me 4 or 5 voicemails to pick up a special order while I was out of town).

Now having complained, I will say that I think smartphone is a really cool technology and highly recommend getting one, particularly for anyone who is part of an Exchange environment.  Note the caveat that every so often (~once in six months?) this seems to happen.

Photos from El Salvador

Pictures from El Salvador now online here.  More will probably come slowly but surely.  There's a bunch of stuff that I really would have liked to have taken pictures of, but either didn't have my camera with me, or didn't think it would have been wise to have taken it out at the time (probably without cause, but whatcha gonna do)...  I didn't take the SLR down with me, so some of the shots didn't turn out as well because I couldn't control shutter speed, etc.  Oh well, I still have the memories :)

First post of May... 16 days into the month

Wow, slow month in posts.  One reason is that I've been out of town for a couple of the weekends and super busy with work during the weekdays.  We just got back yesterday from El Salvador, where one of my cousins was getting married.  A few quick observations so that I don't put off blogging for a long time and not get around to it:

• It would have been a lot more convenient and safe if we spoke Spanish.
• Gas was actually more expensive in San Salvador than in Seattle
• The people who we spoke to from El Salvador were all really nice and friendly and welcoming (except the one crazy guy on our trip to the country - he was quite scary)
• Lots of trash around.  Some looks like just litter, other looks like trash bags broke open and no one cleaned it up.
• Security and razor wire would apparently be great businesses to be in.
• The jungle/bush/wilderness we drove by/through was really cool and beautiful.  It reminded me of stuff you see in the movies, and made me wonder how people can actually walk through there
• Amazing humidity and heat walking off the plane onto the jetway - at 6AM!  It hit you like a wave, and you could smell the humidity.
• Being bumped to first class for the San Salvador to LAX flight was much nicer than the rest of our flights on the trip :)
• LAX is quite possibly one of the crappiest airports I've flown through.  How is it that major airport and hub has such lousy facilities???

More to come later (pictures).