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En España, mi horario era muy diferente de mi horario en los Estados Unidos.  Me levantaba a las siete de la mañana y me lavaba.  Luego, me cepillaba los dientes y me pintaba la cara.  Yo comía el desayuno a las ocho de la mañana.  Mis hermanas y yo íbamos a la escuela a las ocho y media.  Primero, yo iba a la clase de arte.  La clase de arte era muy fácil pero no conocía a todas las personas en mi clase.  Me gustaba la clase de inglés mejor que el arte.  Después de la clase de arte, iba a la clase de inglés.  Siempre sabía como responder las preguntas.  La tarea era muy fácil.

Luego, yo iba a la clase de matemáticas.  No me gustaba la clase de matemáticas porque era muy difícil pero mi profesor era muy simpática.  Después de la escuela, mi hermana anfitriona y yo íbamos el club de fotografía.  El club era muy divertido porque me gusta sacar fotos.  Mis hermanos y yo íbamos al apartamento a las cinco de la noche.  Yo lavaba los platos todas las noches y mis hermanos ponían la mesa para la cena y limpiaban el piso.  Para lavar los platos, usaba el lavaplatos.  Mi hermana usaba unas servilletas y los platos para poner la mesa.  Para limpiar el piso, mis hermanos usaban una esponja y el jabón.  Después comía la cena con mi familia anfitriona, yo hacía mi tarea y yo dormía a las once de la noche.

Normalmente los fines de semana mi familia y yo íbamos al centro comercial y el mercado.  En el mercado comprábamos frutas y verduras frescas.  Mis comidas favoritas del mercado eran las naranjas y las manzanas.  A veces íbamos a la panadería.  Después del mercado, íbamos a las tiendas en el centro comercial.  Mi tienda favorita era “Desigual.”  Cuando fui a España, ninguna de mis ropas era buena para la escuela.  Yo necesitaba comprar ropa nueva.  Yo compré pantalones negros, una blusa, y zapatos de tenis.  La ropa era muy barata y costaba treinta euros.  ¡La blusa también complementó mis ojos!  Mis hermanas anfitrionas compraron bolsos nuevas y mis hermanos compraron zapatos nuevos.

Generalmente durante los fines de semana íbamos al parque por la tarde.  Jugábamos el fútbol y el tenis.  Mis hermanos eran muy competitivos.  Aunque eran competitivos, eran muy divertidos.  Mi hermana era muy obediente y tímido.  Le gustaba dibujar y cantar más que jugar deportes.  Veía mi programa favorita cada lunes a las ocho con ella.  Nos gustan los programas de comedia.  Mi hermana anfitriona y yo también nos gustaba ver flamenco.  Fuimos a una juerga el mes pasado.  ¡Fue excelente!

Mi familia anfitriona tenía cuatro mascotas.  Tenían un perro, dos gatos, y un pez.  Mi hermana paseaba el perro todos los días.  A veces mi hermano le daba comida de la cena al perro.  Mi madre anfitriona le gustaba hacer empanadas y el arroz con pollo.  Ella me enseño a hacer muchos platos españoles.  La comida estaba muy deliciosa.

Después comía mucha comida todos los días, yo necesitaba mantenía la salud.  Yo hacía los abdominales y hacía la cinta.  Yo hacía aeróbicos también.  Generalmente comíamos saludables pero a veces comíamos dulces.  La comida en España era muy deliciosa.  Mi familia anfitriona era muy simpática, el apartamento era grande y espacioso, y España fue muy divertido.

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"Football." Photo. Pixabay.com. 1 Jun. 2018.  30 May 2019. <https://pixabay.com/photos/football-soccer-kick-off-center-3471371/>.

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Although I'm not continuing with Spanish next year, I still want to continue and develop more of an understanding of Spanish.  Learning and knowing Spanish will definitely be very useful since there are many Spanish speakers in the United States.  I'm thinking I'll end up focusing more on the language once I'm out of high school.  If I do continue to learn this language in the future, I'd like to familiarize myself with tenses like the imperfect.  Learning the imperfect this year was very useful to me and helped me with my understanding of Spanish greatly.  I'd really like to learn about how any other tenses are used and what the most common one practiced is.  Regarding the Spanish culture, I'd definitely love to know more about Spanish speakers' customs.  Customs meaning what they find acceptable, unacceptable, rude, kind, unforgivable, etc.

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"Camera Old Retro." Photo. Pixabay.com. 29 Jul. 2017. 27 May 2019. <https://pixabay.com/photos/camera-old-camera-retro-vintage-2598507/>.

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What things are you now able to express in Spanish that you have learned from Spanish II?

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What things are you now able to express in Spanish that you have learned from Spanish II?

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Part 1
Now that I've taken a semester of Spanish II, I'm now able to talk about many different things that would come up in daily conversations.  I'm able to talk about where I'm going, where I've been, where I've been repeatedly in the past and why I'm going there as well.  Before this class, I had no idea that tenses like the imperfect existed.  Learning the imperfect tense was very eye-opening and helped me understand Spanish a lot more.  It was also very helpful to learn about the use of double negatives and the words for "it", "these", "those," "this", "that", etc.  Before this course, I'd seen those words before but didn't know what they meant.  I figured they meant something completely different.

In Spanish I, we'd only touched a little bit on the topic of school and how to formulate sentences regarding your schedule, school habits, etc.  After revisiting that topic and learning about it more in depth, I'm now fully able to talk about my schedule, my classes, and my teachers.  I'm even able to describe my classes and talk about if I like them or not.  Apart from school, we also learned a lot about how to describe the way we found our homes/apartments and how we're able to clean them, regarding our chores around the house and what we use to complete those tasks.  If I were to be actually living in Spain, I'd be able to carry on a conversation about what chores I do around the house and for my family.

Like I've learned in previous units, I'm now able to fully describe my family, their personalities, their jobs, and how they act.  I even know how to describe my extended family, my pets, the same way.  I'm able to carry on a conversation about my hobbies or what I do for fun and about the food I eat.  If I were to be telling a recipe to someone who spoke Spanish, I'd be able to fully formulate my sentences and describe the procedures in detail.  After completing this course, I've been able to observe the many differences between both Spanish and English and their various similarities as well.

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Rauschenberger, Renee. "Sunset Flamenco." Photo. Pixabay.com. 1 Feb. 2019. 30 May 2019. <https://pixabay.com/illustrations/sunset-dance-flamenco-silhouette-3979785/>.

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One of the biggest differences I've observed when taking this course was the use of double negatives.  Spanish speakers use double negatives all the time, in fact it's completely correct to do so.  This shocked me when I was first learning about it because in English it's considered grammatically incorrect to use double negatives anywhere.  In Spanish, it's pretty much incorrect to avoid using double negatives.  This definitely took some getting used to and definitely confused me a few times but I was able to grasp the topic in the end.

Another big difference I've noticed throughout all my years taking Spanish would be the use of masculine and feminine articles.  Words like "a" and "the" have to conform to the specific gender of the object.  In English, it's never like this.  Although we've learned this awhile ago, it still stands as a huge difference between the two languages.

The English word "you" applies to anyone and all people we would be addressing.  In Spanish, there are certain specifications.  Although we have some formality to our language, Spanish has a lot more.  The word "usted" is utilized a lot and meant for older people or people of higher authority.  Another key difference would be all of the varied dialects of the language.  Of course different English speakers have different accents, words,  or ways of speaking, but for Spanish speakers it's much more complex.  There are a number of different types of Spanish languages spoken throughout the world, including the various ones in just the country of Spain.  These include Castilian, Catalan, Gallego or Galician, and Euskera, better known as Basque.

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Jarmoluk, Michal. "Shopping Mall." Photo. Pixabay.com. 10 Jul. 2014. 30 May 2019. <https://pixabay.com/photos/shopping-mall-shop-shopping-kielce-906721/>.

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The one thing I learned about the Spanish culture that excited me most was their multiple holidays and festivals.  In Spain, there are so many more holidays celebrated than in the United States.  Even though Spain shares many of the same holidays that we have, there are still a lot more.  Some of these include "El día de los Reyes", "Carnival", "Las Fallas," "Cruces de Mayo", "La Tomatina", "Hogueras de San Juan," and more.  The ones that caught my eye more specifically would probably be "Carnival", "La Tomatina" and "Las Fallas."  All of these are festivals and seem like lots of fun with many activities to do and things to see.  "Carnival" consists of many parades with lots of colorful costumes, food, and fireworks.  Although the festival is celebrated in mostly Spain, other Catholic countries celebrate it as well.  "La Tomatina" refers to a festival in which thousands of people gather around downtown Buñol to throw tomatoes at each other.  Like Carnival, the festival also has lots of music, dancing, fireworks, and food.

Another thing I found interesting about the Spanish culture would be their routine of siestas.  I'd never known Spain had a scheduled time of day throughout the country for everyone to just relax and commonly leave their schools or places of work for a couple hours.   I'm actually pretty jealous of this occurrence and I wish we had something like this in the United States.  Although I've touched on this before in my previous paragraphs in this project, something I also find very interesting is the different dialects/languages throughout the country.  In the US, it's pretty easy to tell which state or which part of the country someone is from based on their accent or their use of certain words.  For example, many can tell if you're from near the west coast, midwest or east coast based on the way you pronounce "caramel", "roof" or "envelope."  With Spain, it's not anything like this.  In some places it's required that you learn the complete different dialect just to work there, like if you want to work in Barcelona you'll have to learn Catalan.

Although there are many more interesting and fascinating things I've observed and concluded from the Spanish culture, I found the education system particularly unusual.  The different sections of education are divided up very differently than in the US, which surprised me to learn about.  I thought it was interesting that children enroll in elementary school when they're 6 years of age and then graduate when they're 12.  Then they move on to secondary education which is ages 12 to 16.  After the secondary education, teens go on to the Bachillerato for two years.  While attending school, many students are required to wear uniforms as well.

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Keil, Nici. "Tennis Ball Court." Photo. Pixabay.com. 14 Jan. 2011. 27 May 2019. <https://pixabay.com/photos/tennis-ball-tennis-court-2042723/>.

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This semester was my first semester taking an online class.  I also had four other online classes besides Spanish which took awhile to get used to.  Based on my experience, I prefer learning world languages through an online course.  This semester I've learned more Spanish than I ever have in all my years taking it.  Because the class was online, there was a lot more flexibility and gave me a more hands-on learning experience.  When I went to a real public school it was always very hard for me to focus and get assignments done because of all the distractions in the school environment.  All of the lessons in each unit were very thorough and extremely explanatory and I'm so glad I made the decision to transition.  I was able to access the coursework and notes at any time throughout the course, having all the information in front of me.  I could work ahead as I pleased and retake the formative and practice assignments as much as possible to ensure my understanding.  Resources were also provided to me at all times, flashcards being available on multiple documents and notes being easily applicable.

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"Home Office." Photo. Pixabay.com. 2 May 2014. 30 May 2019. <https://pixabay.com/photos/home-office-workstation-office-336377/>.

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- Ability to access the information and coursework at any time, over the weekends, breaks and 24/7.
- The RLCs.  These live classes were very helpful and really helped develop my understanding of topics and helped introduce me to certain assignments, projects, and helped prepare me.
- Ability to be able to contact my teacher whenever; through text, phone call, canvas message, etc.
- Formative assessments.  Having these formative assessments after every lesson helped me practice my knowledge and identify what I needed to improve.

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Hassan, Mohamed. "TV Man Watching." Photo. Pixabay.com. 30 Dec. 2018. 30 May 2019. <https://pixabay.com/photos/tv-man-watching-room-office-3774381/>.

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Dislikes of the Course & What Could be Improved 

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Dislikes of the Course & What Could be Improved 

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- Not very engaging content.  Sometimes when taking notes I had trouble keeping my attention undivided.  Some of the videos weren't very engaging to watch/take notes on and some of them could be repetitive from time to time.

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"Dog Cat Pets." Photo. Pixabay.com. 6 Aug. 2017. 27 May 2019. <https://pixabay.com/photos/dog-cat-pets-animals-friends-2606759/>.

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Some things that helped me learn Spanish throughout the course:

- Writing down due dates and making a weekly schedule of assignments, checking them off as I finished them.  This helped me keep my work organized and on track.
- Making flashcards after finishing a lesson/unit.  I'd study them afterwards which ultimately helped my memory of the terms and more.

Things I need to improve:
- Not procrastinating/waiting until the last minute.  This has been one of my bad habits for years and I need to improve it.
- Doing more additional research to help my understanding of a topic.
- Reaching out to my teacher more if I have questions at any time or questions before I submit an assignment.

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Anna. "Flashcards."  Photo. Pixabay.com. 16 Aug. 2016. 30 May 2019. <https://pixabay.com/photos/flashcards-cards-paper-1591812/>.

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Throughout this course I really appreciated having Mrs. Odom as my teacher.  Whenever I had questions about anything at all she'd respond to me quickly with a thorough and explanatory answer.  She gave me helpful feedback on all the assignments I submitted and clearly stated where I went wrong and how I could fix it.  On all of the announcements she posted helpful tools, websites, reminders, and guidance.  During the last two weeks of the course she made sure to revisit certain topics in the announcements so all of us would be able to revisit the information.  I also really liked how she added shout-outs and recognized students for their hard work in the course regularly.  There's not really much I'd wish to change about the way my teacher helped me throughout this course.