I’ve been taking Spanish classes every Monday night for the past three months.  Tonight I started the level 2 intensive course – 2 hours every Monday and Thursday for the next six weeks.   Back when I signed up, I figured that I’d be over the busy part of the semester by now.  Look how well that prediction turned out.

Tonight’s class seems a huge step up from the previous level.  The tutor spoke in Spanish almost the entire time, and there were lots of things that other students seemed to know that I’d never come across before (like words for animals and fabrics).  However, I’m not too badly off – there were a few others there who seemed to know even less than I do.

Tonight was mostly about reviewing the basics – greetings, numbers and letters, introductions and basic personal information, the verb ‘to be’ and conjugations for a few of the most common regular and irregular verbs.  At one point, we were going around the class describing our personalities and one guy says ‘Soy caliente’.  Caliente means hot in Spanish.  He was trying to say he’s hot-headed and impulsive but we laughed a bit because we thought he was saying that he’s hot (as in attractive).  Turns out that if you use caliente in that context, it actually means ‘I’m horny’.  The tutor was too embarrassed to translate it out loud but he wrote some of the letters on the board until we got the idea.

Then he was talking about how someone would refer to themselves as being hot, as in attractive, and made me rate the guy as to how attractive he was, asking if he was a 60 or an 85 and saying he wouldn’t move on with the class until I’d given him a rating.   I said cien (100) and everyone laughed and the guy made a great show of thanking me.  When it came my turn, I described myself as optimistic, and everyone laughed when the tutor said that my rating the guy 100 was an example of that.

We have to do a regular writing exercise to practice our sentence composition skills.  Currently we only know how to speak in present tense, so we have to keep a diary describing our daily activities in present tense only.  Here’s my first week’s exercise (I have no guarantee that this is in any way correct):

Yo vivo en un apartamento en el centro.  Me levanto a las siete y media todos los días.  Mi trabajo es muy cerca de mi apartamento.  Por la mañana enseño en la universidad.  Hay ochenta y ocho estudiantes in mi clase.  Por la tarde trabajo en mi computadora.  Por la noche, mis amigos y yo bebemos tequila.

My intended translation is this:

I live in an apartment in the city centre.  I get up at 7:30 every day. My work is very close to my apartment.  In the morning I teach in the university.  There are 88 students in my class.  In the afternoon, I work at my computer.  In the evening, my friends and I drink tequila.

My love of tequila is a running joke in the Spanish class, and the tutor makes frequent reference to it.  Another student is travelling to South America to meet girls, and so the tutor often makes reference to him being sad because he’s single and mentioning him finding a girlfriend.

I had a few people over to my place last night for Margaritas and Singstar. The aim of the evening was to find the best Margarita recipe. The three basic Margarita ingredients are tequila, triple sec and lime juice.

We used a blanco tequila – Pepe Lopez silver. You can also use a reposado for a bit more of an oaky taste but I find the blanco better. The more aged (anejo) tequilas aren’t as good for margaritas.

Triple sec is an orange liqueur. We used Cointreau which is a much better orange liqueur but has twice the alcohol content.

Margaritas are best with fresh lemon/lime juice. Apparently lime juice is the best, but limes are very small and expensive so we used half lemon juice and half lime juice which worked just as well. We used 1kg of limes and 1.5kg of lemons.

Most people find Margaritas made with just lemon/lime juice and the alcohol to be far too tart, so it is common to use sweet and sour mix instead of the lime juice. We made ourselves some sugar syrup that was more than 66% sugar and mixed it roughly 50/50 with the lemon & lime juice to get the right balance of sweet and sour.

Salting the rim of the glass is also important, since the salt enhances the taste of the margarita.

How you combine the tequila, triple sec and sour mix to make the margarita turns out to be the area of most variance. I prefer 2:1:1, shaken on the rocks. The others (based on what they had in Texas) prefer 1 part tequila, 1 part cointreau and 2 parts sour mix, for a 1:1:2 ratio served with crushed ice.
Although I didn’t try it last night, I think I’d also quite like a 3:2:1 ratio on the rocks.

The majority conclusion was that 1:1:2 Margaritas are yummy, country music is great, and singing is more fun when everyone is a bit tipsy.

A Bit of Fry & Laurie Season 3 Episode 3 Closing Sketch

A Bit of Fry & Laurie Season 3 Episode 2 Closing Sketch

A Bit of Fry & Laurie Season 3 Episode 1 Closing Sketch

Ingredients:

• 2 parts gin
• 1 part blue curacao
• 1 part lemon juice

Instructions:

Shake with ice, strain into glass and garnish with a slice of lemon. This is basically just a variant on the White Lady, with cointreau replaced by blue curacao. I didn’t find this recipe anywhere, I just made it up. When I was starting to make the ninja turtle with the Bombay Sapphire gin & Blue Curacao I thought the blue was gorgeous, particular next to the blue bottles. So when the Ninja Turtle was vile tasting, I made myself this instead.

Ingredients:

• 2 parts gin
• 1 part blue curacao
• orange juice

Instructions:

Half fill glass with ice. Add curacao, then gin and fill up with orange juice. Stir to mix.

This is a nice tasting drink … if you like orange juice. It appears that I don’t anymore – it is far too sweet for me now.

I’ve got some new toys! I bought a dozen free pour spouts from Choice Catering.

They don’t do any measuring, just allow you to pour the drinks much more quickly and easily. Good bartenders can accurately measure out drinks using these spouts, although I’m not quite that good yet.

The picture on the right shows my spouts in action on the vodka and Cointreau bottles, along with my 3-piece shaker, jigger and the other ingredients to make the Cosmopolitan shown in the centre.

Ingredients:

• 2 parts gin
• 1 part cointreau
• 1 part lemon juice

Instructions:

Shake with ice, strain into glass and garnish with a slice of lemon or orange.

This is similar in taste to the Maiden’s Blush but less sweet. Very nice though, this is something I’d make again.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 parts gin
• 1/2 part Cointreau
• 1/2 part sour mix
• spash of grenadine

Instructions:

Shake with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass.

I’m not normally a fan of gin, but this is actually quite nice. The sweetness of the Cointreau and the sour mix balance the gin very nicely without overpowering its flavour.