Clarissa's Blog

New Series: How Well Do You Know Clarissa?

OK, folks, I’m tired to the point where I have mild hallucinations and can’t blog about anything intelligent. So I have come up with a new series. In it, I will post questions aimed at discovering how well my readers know me after 3,5 years of blogging. Leave your answers in the comment section. The person who gets the most answers right will be declared a winner and I will do something nice for them that I will invent later on.

Here is the very first question to inaugurate the series: look at the pictures of the shoes and guess which is my absolutely favorite kind ever because it perfectly fits my personality and my sense of style.

A) Classic pumps

B) High boots

C) Mary Janes

D) Ballet flats

E) Ankle boots

F) Stiletto heels

G) Espadrilles

Which pair do you associate me with the most?

I Mean, Like

It really bugs me that my students keep peppering their utterances with “I mean” and “like.” That isn’t because I’m such a purist but simply because they use these expressions while speaking Spanish. At this point, their Spanish is very advanced, so they chatter away like little chatterboxes. The way their Spanish sounds as a result, is something like this:

Los problemas, like, económicos de España son, like, muy graves. Las medidas de, I mean, austeridad, todavía, like, no han producido, like, I mean, muchos resultados positivos. En realidad, like, no he podido, I mean, encontrar ni un solo, like, resultado, like, positivo, I mean, en mis lecturas y, like, mi investigación. Like. I mean. And I’m like, I mean, eso no está bien.

As you can imagine, this gets quite annoying.