¡Prospero año nuevo!

[icepixie]

Well, well. As usual, our Christmas was green, but nature seems determined to give us a green-and-white speckled new year. Flurries abound (although they're melting everywhere but on rooftops and car hoods), there's a fire in the woodstove, I have new books and new-old fanfic to read, and the only thing that isn't perfect is those last, niggling changes I have to make to one of my statements of purpose before I can be done with this whole grad school application process. (Well, aside from the FAFSA. But I can hardly do anything about that until I get my W-2s--ugh, I'm finally making enough money to need to fill out tax forms this year--so I'm off the hook for a while.)

Anyway. Goodbye, 2007, and welcome, 2008. I hope it's very good to all of you.

My one goal for the new year at the moment is...well, finishing the apps will be a start, but once that's over, I really need to brush up on my Spanish for the translation exams that will be coming my way over the next couple of years. At the moment, the plan is just to start checking Spanish-language novels out from the library (...okay, maybe I'll have to start with YA fiction) and read several pages a day with the help of my old Spanish-English dictionary and my 501 Spanish Verbs, but if anyone happens to have a suggestion for a textbook of some kind--say, third-year or so; I think that's where I've fallen to--I'll gladly take it.

Comments

[icepixie]

Yeah, I attempted to start with Quijote in third-year Spanish, and that didn't go over well. I do like translating poetry, but I know I'll get all caught up in making it look pretty, when I really need sheer blocks of text just to practice on. Mostly I need to relearn the vocab I've forgotten over the years, and pick up some idioms, maybe. At least these translation tests are all foreign language-to-English, or so it seems...

[sleepingcbw.livejournal.com]

I do like translating poetry, but I know I'll get all caught up in making it look pretty

Heh. Translated text is somehow inherently pretty to me; I always got in trouble for making my translations too literal, because I liked them that way.

I haven't even thought about proficiency tests yet. I'm too freaked out by my Associate Instructor audition in February -- sightsinging (ok), intervals and harmonic analysis (pretty ok), and keyboard sightreading (so, so screwed, eight kinds of screwed, what the crap was I thinking).

[icepixie]

I'm too freaked out by my Associate Instructor audition

Ohhhhh my. I'm glad I don't have to do one of those. At least as far as I know. (My programs are more of the "make you take a class on how to teach in the first semester, then throw you to the sharks second semester" school.)

[sleepingcbw.livejournal.com]

PS: teaching is easy :)

[icepixie]

I certainly hope so...