Second Key

You know, I am pretty psyched about this immersion I'm feeling en La Mission pero I need to hablar con los vecinos (a word I pulled all the way from high school Spanish class -- way to go!) si quiero to improve mi castellano. Me gusta Spanglish, pero mas castelleno es preferable. I can already read about ten times the amount of I can produce, just because I know French and English.

I'm recently caught between the Italian and Spanish spellings of ciao/chau. Maybe I should just go the ironic 'merican way and say, "Chow."

Que es la diferencia entre castellano y espaNol? No entiendo muy bien. (I made that first sentence up and as far as I can tell, it is correct. I love Spanish.)

Ah, but the Internet enlightens us:

Castilian) Spanish (lengua)

CASTELLANO Castellano (Castilian) is the official term for Spanish used in the Spanish Constitution of 1978, but “español“ (Spanish) and “lengua española” (Spanish language) are often used when referring to Spanish as opposed to French, Italian or German, and also in linguistic or academic contexts. Elsewhere, the term “español” is often avoided because of its associations with either the former colonizing country (in the case of Latin America) or (in Spain) with the domination of Spanish over the other languages spoken in Spain (principally Catalan, Basque and Galician).

So that makes sense. It is a much cooler word than espaNol, as well. (I'm gonna learn how to type an N with a ~. Promise...)

First key

Actually find time to study. This has been difficult of late on my end, but I think I will start taking notes off the bilingual signs in all the trains I ride -- I can learn words like:

silla
caer
hacia
uhm...

Shoot, I know there are more words! ;D unicamente -- did I spell that right? Anyways, if I take notes and think a little harder (and get a little more sleep, no doubt) then I can at least talk about what to do in the event of a train emergency :D