Espanol y Carnaval de Invierno

Hola mis amigos y amigas! (Hello my friends!) Did I mention that I'm taking a Spanish class? It's an informal class through Minneapolis Community Education that meets once a week for eight weeks. I have never taken a Spanish class, although I have friends who are fluent and it's also a language that one picks up, especially living in a city.

Since it's an informal class, there are no grades and it's very focused on learning phrases rather than grammar. I really don't know much yet, but the phrase of the day is - yo tengo mucho frio! (I'm very cold.)

I have yet to mention our surprise visitor on Sunday - Jack! His friend was passing through for the day and so Jack rode along and spent the day with us. After briefly sucking Jack into his xbox world, we were able to pull Chris out of the house for a few hours.

We went to the St. Paul Winter Carnival, which was, frankly, a disappointment, save for the Hot Dish Tent. We had to explain to Chris that hot dish is local lingo for a specific thing (aka casserole or goulash) and not necessarily any type of hot dish. Although they did have chili and jambalaya, neither of which fit the hot dish definition as I know it.

I had tater tot hot dish - the only real one on the menu - but sure would've loved to have Mom's vegetable beef noodle hot dish. Maybe you can get that on the menu for next year?

The ice sculptures were quite amazing, but there weren't many of them and so many people crowded around that it was hard to get a good look at them. You can sort of see the edge of one in the background of this photo. It looks like I'm wearing an ice crown!