This evening was the start of a new session of yoga. There was no yoga last week. With Spanish classes on Monday and Wednesday night, I haven't found the time or energy to practice yoga at home. I was out of focus for the beginning of class this evening, but I eventually got into the right state of body and mind.

I feel like I am very, very close to achieving Bakasana (The Crane Pose).

Avilio (my Spanish instructor) and I have been exchanging emails. I'll write to him en español with a question about grammar or for his opinion of a dictionary. Avilio writes back to me totalmente en español. It takes me a while to translate his emails, but I get it eventually. I showed one of Avilio's emails to a native Spanish-speaking coworker (after I'd translated it). Her reaction was, "My god! This is some hard Spanish!"

There is a type of person that will who appear in a clinic - patients, typically, but not always - who don't trust the system. They will insist on taking shortcuts to bypass the system, which also overrides the safeguards built into the system, which inevitably causes problems in the system, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Example: Patient needs to establish care in the clinic. Patient calls the clinic, and is transferred to the coordinator in charge of reviewing new patient histories and assigning that patient to the appropriate doctor. Patient gets a voicemail recording, because the coordinator is talking to another patient. Believing that a voicemail won't get answered, Patient calls other phone numbers in the clinic, trying to get a new appointment, but is repeatedly transferred to the coordinator's phone. Patient keeps calling other numbers, getting increasingly frustrated, until finally reaching an employee who is inexperienced enough to schedule angry Patient without the coordinator's review. The day of Patient's scheduled appointment, the attending physician reviews the clinic schedule and discovers that Patient has been scheduled into the wrong clinic altogether. Schedulers try to phone Patient, but since Patient lives 30 miles away, Patient is already on the road and can't be reached. Patient shows up, after taking time off from work, and driving 30 miles, only to find that he has no appointment. Patient now knows he was right to not trust the system.

Craig phoned us from California this afternoon. His friend of 19 years, Paul, had died here in Seattle. Phillip found the voicemail when he got home. Phillip called me at work to break the news. I'd met Paul four or five times, maybe - I didn't know him at all - but I knew Craig, and I knew how much Paul meant to him. I felt empty on my walk home. I phoned Craig as soon as I got home. Of course, Phillip had already talked to him. Craig seemed so far away, and I felt helpless.

Phillip and I went to a geocaching event (a get-together) last night, at a pizza place in Kirkland. It was a large crowd. There were some geocachers we'd met before and some we were familiar with, but met for the first time - a nice mix. Most of the conversations were about eastside geocaches. Phillip and I agreed that we need to find more geocaches on the eastside, since these events rarely take place in Seattle.

Before Spanish class began tonight, our instructor told us that feedback is very important to him, and that if there's anything we don't like about the class, we should not be afraid to tell him, and that if don't understand anything, we should not hesitate to ask for clarification. He seemed anxious to talk about it, and yet, at the same time, hesitant to talk about it. I sensed that something was worrying him. All five of us students told him that we're enjoying the class very much. Eventually, he told us that he'd received complaints from the Tuesday & Thursday class that his teaching style lacked structure. Later, he admitted that two students had dropped out of that class. After class, we all discussed the matter some more. During the discussion, he slipped in that he'd signed a contract to teach at Seattle University. One of us asked him if he'd be teaching the next level of Spanish at Seattle Languages International (where I was tonight). He hesitated, and then hinted - without actually saying - that his future at Seattle Languages International may be uncertain.

This, I think, is a tragedy. Right now, after three one hour and forty-five minute classes, I don't feel like I can hold a real conversation in Spanish yet, but I feel like I already have more of a foundation for the language than I ever have had before. I am happy that we're not just reciting phrases.

We learned about time and distance tonight. We learned that when speaking Spanish, just as in English, there is a point when you typically express travel in distance. (How far is it to that building over there? Fifty feet.) There is a point when travel can be expressed in either distance or time. (How far is it from Seattle to Olympia? Fifty miles, or an hour and a half by car.) And there is a point when travel is typically expressed in time. (How far is it from Seattle to La Vegas? Between two and three hours by airplane.)

We did counting exercises. We learned numbers - both cardinal and ordinal. We did an exercise I had never seen taught before: We learned how to say phone or identification numbers. For instance, suppose the first three digits of your phone number were 555. You might say "five five five" or "five fifty-five" - but it would be unnatural to say "five hundred and fifty-five" and confusing to say "fifty-five five."

We learned a little about the preposition "de" - which properly means "of," but in actual practice is used as a substitute for just about any preposition. To demonstrate this concept, he asked us about the common English expression "a glass of water." Is the glass really made of water? No, but we understand it to mean "a glass with water inside it."

All of this was in Spanish, of course. Starting tonight, the instructor is teaching almost entirely in Spanish, switching to English only when we don't understand his gestures.

A long time ago, I took a Spanish class from the UW's Experimental College. I bought a dictionary for the class. I found a very used copy of The University of Chicago Spanish/ingles Dictionary at Twice Sold Tales, and bought it. The instructor turned up her nose at it. She gave me a list of "good" dictionaries that can be found at more reputable bookstores. I liked mine, though, and kept it. I showed the dictionary to my instructor tonight and his face lit up. He told me that "Webster" has almost become a generic term, because Webster dictionaries are considered the best dictionaries available. And, he continued, Merriam-Webster is published by The University of Chicago. He strongly approved of my dictionary.

I also showed my instructor a copy of Think Spanish! ¡Piensa en Español! Magazine. He'd never seen it before, and took an instant liking to it. For awhile, I didn't think I was going to get it back.

I am very sleepy right now.

There's something wrong with this picture. Patient says it's not his fault that he's ten minutes late for his appointment - he couldn't find a parking space. The patient is holding a nearly full iced latte, the ice cubes are still frozen. It doesn't seem worth making a comment, though.

Phillip and I went to Barbara and Don's house for dinner yesterday. The occasion was Don's 75th birthday. My friend Bernice was there. We met Don's sister Pat and her husband John. We also met Nancy and Nora. (I'm not sure about that last name. I knew it during the party, but I've forgotten it now. It started with an "N" - I remember that much.) Phillip and I were the two youngest people there. It was an enjoyable party. Everybody arrived at 2:30, and the conversations were still going at 7:30. No one ever seemed to be at a loss for interesting topics of conversation: from music to banana peels, sugar gliders to hurdy gurdies.