Spanish – No comprendo! No se! Tengo una pregunta! Repita, por favor!

We had four hours of lessons this week, and learned a lot. CSI is a full immersion program, so the instructors don’t speak English and we don’t learn the language from the “ground up.” Matt and I are in a semi-private class with Jose, who not only teaches Spanish at CSI, but is a politician in Villareal and Tamarindo.

Matt has four years under his belt, and although it was in high school, there are bits and pieces coming back to him quickly. My foreign language background is in Japanese and Russian – neither of which relate to one another or to Spanish or English. Spanish is at least familiar since there is a strong influence in Colorado, but that is about the extent of my comfort with learning the language.

We made it through the first couple of lessons and have some useful phrases and vocabulary at our fingertips. We started conjugating verbs at the end of our last class and my head was spinning. The alphabet, numbers, time, I, you, he, she we, here, there, and on and on were barely getting a foothold. Matt was keeping up in conversation, but I had to write, review, absorb. I am quite sure that we are at different levels and I would have done much better in a slower paced class.

Ben, Jacob and Abby, on the other hand are rapido! Ben and Jacob’s instructor, Maria told me after their first class that they were very good, very fast and very smart! I said, very good. This was all said in Spanish, just like that! Abby’s teacher gave some variation of a thumbs up. Abby is surprisingly happy and easy going about the whole experience.

Because we are not forced to communicate in Spanish, (in day to day life), I doubt we will progress as quickly as I was hoping. But, the combination of Spanish classes and the exposure to the language will help. Yo estoy muy bien y cansado!!!!