Amerykanka's Adventures - A New Hope (ES, PL, RU)

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Amerykanka
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Re: Amerykanka's Adventures - A New Hope

Postby Amerykanka » Fri Jul 31, 2015 4:37 am

I know I should write a proper update, but I don't have much time, so here is an abbreviated version. I'm sure I will have more to say later.

~ I finished watching Gran Hotel; I did not like the third season as much as the first two, but at least everyone got a happy ending. I must say though, was it just me or did Julio start getting a bit unreasonable toward the end?

~ I watched the first season of El internado and I really don't know what to think. I guess my principal reaction is: "Why is Julio wearing a student uniform and acting like a total jerk?" I know, very deep. I always have a hard time when actors are in multiple shows. Anyway, I am intrigued by the plot and I like some of the characters; I'm just not as drawn in as I was by Gran Hotel.

~ I started La sombra del viento by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. I'm only 40 pages in so I will reserve my comments until later.

~ I skyped with my Polish teacher for an hour this morning. It felt good to speak Polish; it's been a while - ever since I was in Kraków five months ago.

I suspect I might have forgotten a few things but oh well. I'm tired and I should really go to bed.

Oh, yes - does anyone have any experience with Antena 3's show Velvet? It's on Netflix so it would be easy for me to watch, but I don't know much about it.
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Re: Amerykanka's Adventures - A New Hope

Postby nj24 » Thu Aug 06, 2015 4:03 am

Amerykanka wrote:~ I finished watching Gran Hotel; I did not like the third season as much as the first two, but at least everyone got a happy ending. I must say though, was it just me or did Julio start getting a bit unreasonable toward the end?


I felt the same way about the last season too. Some pretty despicable characters had happy endings which made it feel like the last episode was rushed.

Amerykanka wrote:~ I watched the first season of El internado and I really don't know what to think. I guess my principal reaction is: "Why is Julio wearing a student uniform and acting like a total jerk?" I know, very deep. I always have a hard time when actors are in multiple shows.


That's the thing with Spanish series -- the production companies are smaller than in countries like the U.S. so the same actors keep on popping up in different shows. It can be a bit disconcerting when an actor is suddenly a protagonist when in the last series you watched he was a villain or when a series has a nearly identical cast to one you just watched.

Amerykanka wrote:Oh, yes - does anyone have any experience with Antena 3's show Velvet? It's on Netflix so it would be easy for me to watch, but I don't know much about it.


I have seen both seasons. I did not like it as much as El internado or Gran Hotel or other Spanish shows I have watched. It was a bit too melodramatic for me. I like series with lots of twists and turns and mystery, and this one was too much of a soap opera with characters making irrational choices. But it is very well-done, and I guess I enjoyed it enough to keep watching even though it made me annoyed most of the time. It was fun to see Spain in the 60s.
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Amerykanka
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Re: Amerykanka's Adventures - A New Hope

Postby Amerykanka » Thu Aug 06, 2015 11:13 pm

nj24, thanks for the info on Velvet. Funny, I only saw 15 minutes and I already kind of suspected that it might be too melodramatic for my taste. I think I will put it on hold for a bit - after all, I have four more seasons of El Internado, six more seasons of Águila Roja, and all of El tiempo entre costuras to watch before I run out. Plus my brother owns all six seasons of Lost and I have discovered that three of them have Spanish audio - one day he is going to wake up and discover that he's been robbed.

With respect to actors popping up everywhere, that seems to happen a lot in British shows, too. I have become an expert at recognizing actors and actresses in spite of dramatic differences in age, hair color, etc. Now I must start applying this skill to Spanish TV, as well. And yes, it can certainly be disorienting to see heroes transformed into villains and vice versa! My worst case yet is Emilie de Ravin, who is in Lost, Roswell, and Once Upon a Time - I can never remember if I am supposed to like her or not.
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Re: Amerykanka's Adventures - A New Hope

Postby Cavesa » Thu Aug 06, 2015 11:29 pm

It's funny something like that is weird to someone :-D As I grew up in a small country, it is automatic that actors get recycled a lot. And even funnier are the dubbers. Ten or much more foreign actors may have one. Or one foreign actor can be dubbed by various people in various movies. Now, that feels weird ;-)

If you watch some dubbed tv series into Spanish, you will notice the same things I've mentioned. Actually, that was one of my main reasons to finally take the leap of faith and leave dubbed series.

I'm really looking forward to your review of La Sombra del viento
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Amerykanka
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Re: Amerykanka's Adventures - A New Hope

Postby Amerykanka » Thu Aug 06, 2015 11:31 pm

I have been really bad about updating this log lately. Uggh. I blame it on the attack of the Spanish TV shows. Anyways . . .

SPANISH UPDATE
- I finished Season 3 of El Internado today and I am extremely annoyed about the Marcus/Amelia story line because I liked Amelia's character up until recently and now I have lost all respect for her; she has absolutely no business being a teacher. I still like the actress though - she was really funny in Gran Hotel as Laura.

- I am now on page 118 of La sombra del viento. Still very interesting.

- I haven't submitted any writing on iTalki in a while but I have been writing in the Spanish Forum, so I'm not beating myself up about it. Still, I would like to get back to my daily submissions.

- Flashcards - oh, joy. My main Spanish deck has now passed 6,000 cards. And my sentence deck has over 1,000. Luckily, I still have them under control so I've only been averaging 20 minutes a day.

-------

Alas, my Polish has been suffering. My problem is that I have a hard time dividing my attention - I just get stuck on one language and then I ignore all the others. (Okay, and my other problem is that Spanish TV is so addictive.) Anyway, if anyone has suggestions about how to encourage equal division of time between languages, I would love to hear them.

--------

GOALS
- I would like to finish La sombra del viento by August 19 - the day that I leave for school. For one thing, it's a library book so I can't take it with me, and more importantly, once the semester starts I won't have as much time to read.
- ???

I'm feeling uninspired. I do need to devise an epic ace-the-DELE study plan before I go back to college though. And an epic try-to-recover-all-the-Latin-and-Greek-I-forgot-over-the-summer plan.
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Amerykanka
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Re: Amerykanka's Adventures - A New Hope

Postby Amerykanka » Thu Aug 06, 2015 11:38 pm

Cavesa wrote:It's funny something like that is weird to someone :-D As I grew up in a small country, it is automatic that actors get recycled a lot. And even funnier are the dubbers. Ten or much more foreign actors may have one. Or one foreign actor can be dubbed by various people in various movies. Now, that feels weird ;-)

If you watch some dubbed tv series into Spanish, you will notice the same things I've mentioned. Actually, that was one of my main reasons to finally take the leap of faith and leave dubbed series.

I'm really looking forward to your review of La Sombra del viento


Ooh, I can't wait to experience the dubbers. :) I've watched half a season or so of 24 in Spanish (very well dubbed), and then Harry Potter (that was pretty awfully done), but that's the extent of my experience with dubbing.

I am getting more used to seeing actors in multiple roles, but yeah, it is still weird sometimes. I don't watch much television in general so maybe that's why. And yet I don't dislike the confusion of roles - it is all part of the entertainment. :D

I will definitely post a review of La sombra del viento - at this point I suspect it will be a positive one. I hope so!
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Amerykanka
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Re: Amerykanka's Adventures - A New Hope

Postby Amerykanka » Sat Aug 08, 2015 1:33 am

Qué raro. Hace mucho que tengo la intención de mejorar mis (pocas) habilidades culinarias - quizás empiece con uno de estos programas. Hoy vi la mitad de un capítulo de "Madrileños por el mundo" y lo encontré bastante interesante, entonces puede que ya sea hora de que me diversifique un poco con lo que veo.
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Amerykanka
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Re: Amerykanka's Adventures - A New Hope

Postby Amerykanka » Sat Aug 08, 2015 3:09 am

Okay, time for some experimentation with progress bars.

300 hours LC Spanish: 80 / 300
Spanish Reading 5000 pages by Jan 2016: 1665 / 5000
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Amerykanka
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Re: Amerykanka's Adventures - A New Hope

Postby Amerykanka » Sun Aug 09, 2015 3:03 am

Hoy, entre otras cosas, decidí repasar las reglas acerca del uso del pretérito versus el del imperfecto, ya que sigo cometiendo errores inadmisibles. Lo que pasa es que puedo llenar un ejercicio como éste http://www.indiana.edu/~call/ejercicios/resp_pret_imp01.html sin incurrir en ningún error, y en mi clase de español universitaria siempre sacaba 100% en los exámenes de gramática sin tener que estudiar antes más que unos diez minutos, pero cuando se trata de la "vida real" se me nota que no soy nativa. Cada vez que escribo algo largo en español, confundo el pretérito y el imperfecto por lo menos una vez. He llegado a identificar las circunstancias bajo las cuales suelo dudar - las oraciones como "this trip was a wonderful experience", "we were in Spain for two weeks" y "I went to the beach every morning for three months" siempre me plantean problemas. ¿Pretérito o imperfecto?

Me inclino a emplear el imperfecto más de la cuenta y mi primer instinto sería poner cada uno de estos verbos en el imperfecto, pero ya sé que esto sería un error. Puede que esté equivocada, pero tras leer las explicaciones de todos los libros de texto que he amasado durante los años, me parece que hay que utilizar el pretérito en todos estos ejemplos. Entonces tendríamos

A) Este viaje fue una experiencia maravillosa

B) Estuvimos en España por dos semanas

C) Fui a la playa cada mañana por tres meses

¿Qué piensan ustedes? ¿He acertado o no?

(Ay, las series españolas me van corrompiendo la gramática latinoamericana - en ésa última frase, por poco escribo "¿Qué pensáis vosotros?" ;) )
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Amerykanka
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Re: Amerykanka's Adventures - A New Hope

Postby Amerykanka » Sun Aug 09, 2015 4:12 am

¡Muchas gracias por tus explicaciones! Tus ejemplos me han servido mucho. Me alegro de haber entendido algo por fin. :D A veces mi instinto gramatical me guía bien, pero otras veces no tengo tanta suerte. De todos modos, voy a continuar haciendo ejercicios y prestando atención especial a todos los verbos que encuentro en el pretérito y el imperfecto. Supongo que ésta es la manera más eficaz de mejorar mi uso de estos dos tiempos.

Y ahora, ¡a dormir! Tenía que estar en la cama desde hace una hora pero nunca me ha gustado acostarme. Hay demasiadas cosas interesantes que hacer.
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