Continental!

Second day in la escuela today and our teacher Enrique seemed to be feeling particularly sassy during the first session. He is such a know-it-all, not just about Spanish language, of which he is obviously supposed to be, but of everything. And just loves to correct you about anything, and take the Michael out of your opinions. Once you get past his inability to agree with anything you say, it honestly is quite fun. Today we continued our study of the preterite and Enrique talked at us for an hour during our conversation session.

En la casa, Marina had made a delicious lunch of vegetable soup, with tacos and guacamole on the side. Followed by meat, rice and potatoes - in Mexico lunch is the biggest meal of the day. It takes at least an hour as we eat and talk, and eat and talk.

Today I really needed the siesta, as I couldn't sleep at all last night. Maybe I'm re-adjusting to having my own room and the lack of noise from people moving about at night!

I dragged myself out at 5pm though, worried that I might not sleep tonight! Lazily, I did not go far, just to the cafe in the library, which is only 5 minutes from la casa. I worked on some Spanish revision, which made a change from yesterday, when I left my homework until 8:50am this morning. Tut Tut.

One of my favourite things at home, before I jumped ship and Katt moved to Singers, was our Sunday evenings chez #Kanja, playing shithead and Hearts, while drinking champagne or 'secco.

Marina had said last night that we should play cards today, and so after dinner (delicious omlette) we embarked on a game of "Continental". Just Marina, Barbara and I, as Alice is not a fan of card games, and Sandra (Marina and Arnesto's daughter in law) and Fernanda (their granddaughter), joined us in the third round.

Friends, the rules are as follows. You have two packs of cards. Shuffle them together and deal 6 to each player. Players keep their cards hidden. As the rounds progress, so the number of cards dealt increases. The aim of each round is to achieve the correct number of runs in a suit and/or trebles of the same number. In the first round for example, you need two trebles before you can put your cards face up on the table. 

The turn starts with the player to the right of the dealer and they pick up a card from the face-down pile. If it helps them, they put a different card down, face-up. If not they put it back down but face up, and the turn moves to the next person who can choose to either take the face-up card or take a new one from the face-down pile. They then put the card they want least into the face up pile, and so on it goes.

When the turn moves to the next person, if they don't want the face-up card, the option to take it moves around the table anti-clockwise. However, anyone wanting to take the card out of their own turn must take an additional card from the face down pack, as a penalty. In this way players can build their runs/threes, but may also end up with lots of cards in their hand, which could result in points later on. Following?

Let's assume that it's my turn in round 2.
I started with seven cards and I need one run and one three of a kind (of numbers).
After a few turns I've got the 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 of diamonds and 4 Jacks, 4 of hearts and a joker.
It's my turn so I pick a card up (from either the face-down or face-up pile), and then I place down on the table, face up, the following: 2, 3, 4 and 5 of diamonds and 3 Jacks.
In this first reveal I can only place down the minimum cards required by the game.

I place a card down on the face up pile. The turn passes to the next person, as usual. At this point, I now need to get rid of my remaining cards, and once I, or one of the other players has done so, the round is over and we count up points for any remaining cards in the hands of other players.