So for all of you who may need some time to catch up with my extensive blogging, this is the day for you. Today I had a very lazy day and actually didn’t leave the house all day. I know it sounds lame since, especially since I am in a foreign country, however I did want a day like this to simply relax and get ready for the week ahead. Additionally, I slept into about 11:00 this morning. And the bus to the station only runs once an hour for limited hours on Sunday, so it seemed safer (and less time spent waiting in the cold) to just stay in. The day actually passed pretty quickly though. Unfortunately, I had a lot of reading to do for this week and I still am not done, although I do have a 5 hour midday break tomorrow between classes, so I can use that time to get some work done.
I must catalog one short story though for today. Background Information: My host dad is pretty knowledgeable in the English language, and he poses a challenge to every student who stays with them to try to find a word that he does not know the meaning of. Now I didn’t think this was going to be to difficult and I am sure we will find several over my stay with them, however my first official one was today. I was actually talking to my host mom this morning (I don’t know how we got on the topic), but we were talking about fruit. She was talking about how they have apple trees in their backyard, and I mentioned that my dad and Bob’s condo in California has grapefruit trees right out side their door. I told her though the rind (like the skin) on those grapefruit is usually a lot thicker than one that you would purchase in the store. She said, “Huh?” She didn’t know what the word ‘rind’ meant, so I explained it to her. We then asked my host dad later if he knew what it meant, and after a few guesses, he gave up. While a goofy story, I thought it was necessary to recount. So if anyone has any day-to-day words that you think I should ask my family if they know, just send me a message or something and we can see (just don’t make it too obscure; I mean I at least should know what it means and use it on occasion).
That’s it for today. I told you it would be short.
I am finding it really difficult to try to come up with a word to try to stump your host dad with. So, after thinking about this a bit, the only thing I've come up with is VESTIBULE. That's a pretty old fashioned word. We don't even us it much. Give it a try and, meanwhile, I'll try to come up with something else.
ReplyDeleteI have thought of two more words to try out on your host dad. One of them occurred to me when I was reviewing an exhibit in one of my cases, and the other one came up in conversation today with a colleague.
ReplyDelete(1) Exfoliate -- which means: to peel (as applied to skin), or corrode (as applied to metal)
(2) Fortuitous -- which means: by chance, or unexpected