practica de hablar

Unfortunately I am stuck in school mode for this week and have been busying preparing for two texts this weeks I have had time to do new things. The weather has been better this week and there is less rain but its been very windy. the other day I walked through Algorta down to the Beach and the porte deportivo. It was nice to be right by the water and I hope the weather holds out so I can explore some more. I can't wait for Barcelona this weekend!
I got a chance to meet my intercambio (language partner) this week in Bilbao. his name is Imran and he is half Spanish Half Indian, but fortunately he speaks very good English although clearly the British type. We walked around Bilbao for a few hours talking about anything that came up primaryily in English. I was trying to correct his slang and phraseology to be more American. Unfortunately when it was my turn to speak Spanish I am no where near as advanced as he is. However, this means that I will have someone who can directly correct me as I make mistakes and it should lead to great improvements for me. We both have a bit of free time between classes and yesterday we met and talked mainly political things. Here in Europe, those who support the free market and less regulations are called liberals (basically the classical sense) and I explained to him the politcal terminolgy of the US and also introduced him to Ayn Rand.
I have also begun to have more conversations with my Spanish roomate Aitor. Generally we hang out he watches TV while I do my HW. I generally ask for a bit of help every now and then when it comes to translations of certain words and its very handy having an native speaker as a dictionary. the hard thing though is trying to circumlocute around the unknown word to provide a definition. Yesterday I played for him some songs I have on my Mp3 player that have Spanish in them and he was able to understand them pretty well. He likes some American rap like Eminem but when I asked if he understood it all he said he didnt. Im going to see if I have any other songs to play for him.
Also I got a new class at the english school where I have a part time teaching job. These kids are older so they are more mature and better behaved. I'm trying to get them to open up and practice their converstational skills because they dont seem to have many problems with the grammar. this should mean that I will bring in some more € at the end of the month!