Hello Christy, Goodbye Linda

I went to lunch at La Flor de Oaxaca with Christy, a woman from my class. We had ridden the bus together and struck up a conversation.

She is from Oakland, has a longtime boyfriend from Venezuela, and has 2 kids, ages 3 and 6, with him. The kids are here with her because she wants to improve her Spanish and have them practice theirs.

I went back for an hour of class with Linda. We played a game "Tabu" where you have your partner try to guess a word you describe without saying 5 other words related to it - for instance, if the word was "Woody Allen" the card shows that you can’t say "Director" or "Movie" or "Comedian" or "New York" or "Actor." All in Spanish, of course.

Then Linda and I walked over to the Zocalo. It was her last day here, so I said goodbye. That's one thing about the school format - people are always arriving and leaving, so it is hard to get to know anyone really well.

I went for a coffee and chatted with the owner of the place for a while. Well, mostly she chatted, at about a mile a minute, and I tried to understand.