more than conjugation

i've been taking a spanish class before work since august. mostly because:

a) it's a better way to spend the day than sleeping till 2 p.m. after having stayed up all night doing ridiculous things like painting my toenails
b) it gets me out of the house and away from the television
c) i have to walk more than fifteen blocks from where i park -- more exercise than i've been getting as of late
d) maybe i'd get to know my coworkers
e) maybe i'd meet cool people
f) i'd get to relive the glory days of school when i left homework till the last minute and challenged myself to completing it at a stoplight, on a bus or walking up the stairs, not with accuracy but completion in mind (still got it!)
g) maybe i wouldn't use up my daytime cellular minutes harassing my friends/family within the first three days of my billing cycle and be forced to live as a hermit the rest of the month anymore
h) one day i couldn't remember the second-person present subjunctive for poner was for about three hours, which really pissed me off
i) i tried to read this book, 'el escandalo,' that i had bought in Granada solely because it was written by Pedro Antonio de Alarcon -- a man after whom the major strip we partied on every night for the entire semester i was there was named -- and didn't get very far
j) i don't completely feel like myself unless i'm in some kind of class
k) it was in the office conference room
l) the company was paying

even though i'm still up at all hours wasting time, i did in fact meet cool people. i got to know two coworkers better. i completed my homework on the shuttlebus when i managed to catch it, however it didn't work as well when i had to walk. i was never on time (sometimes an hour late), but hardly missed a class. i ended up using more daytime minutes because it was more daytime hours i was awake. i definitely brushed up on grammar and have come to the realization that as 'escandaloso' as Alarcon's book is, the main reason i couldn't get through it was because it's boring.

today was the last day of class. i was sad. because, despite all the trouble it was getting out of bed on tuesdays and thursdays and however much i would struggle and make up broke-ass pretend spanish words (usually something in english with -ar or -er and a question mark slopped onto the end), i really had a great time. the profesora is a fiesty bolivian mamma who has lived on four continents and will probably have been to the rest by the end of 2006. she believes you need to ditch the book to really learn the language and is extremely supersitious. she tells it like it is in that straightforward, you-need-to-hear-it way not unlike my own goldenhearted mother, especially when i was the only one there. needless to say, i learned a whole lot more than just grammar in that class. case in point:

'forgive my bluntness, cadiz, but you remind me so much of my daughter, so i feel like i can be direct. in my era, girls were to be all pure and virgin when we got married because that's in our religion and our culture. but i consider myself feministic, and i say that's not correct. you tell me, if you're not happy in the bed, can you really consider yourself happy in your marriage? but they didn't tell you about that back then. what if there was better out there and you just didn't know for your whole life? this is what i say: if you are mature and find a person you love from your heart, you should know what you're getting. i'm telling you, cadiz, you take that boy straight to a hotel and find out!'

yeah, that sure as hell wasn't in the book.

oh, and the second-person present subjunctive for poner is pongas.