I’ve avoided posting an update on how the learning is going for fear of somehow jinxing it. But it’s going well enough now that I feel I can risk it.
In general I’m doing really well, we are all doing well and the teacher is great — we’re going at exactly the right pace, and everyone is getting multiple chances at trying new structures and phrases.
Today we started on irregular verbs. Spanish has regular verbs that can be conjugated easily (eg “comer” means “to eat”, and you can say “I eat” by changing the “er” to “o”, and he eats by changing it to “e”, and we eat by changing the “er” to “emos”, so “comemos cada día” — we eat every day”. But Spanish can’t be too easy, so there are a bunch of irregular verbs where those easy rules don’t always work. Unfortunately there are no rules for those verbs, so you just have to remember the exceptions.
So we had fun using various verbs and building sentences using the syntax we’ve learned. It’s actually been a lot of fun.
The one on one tuition I have in the afternoon is… different.. though I must confess, I start off each lesson skeptical of what he’s asking me to do, and end up acknowledging it was really good.
As for what my day is like:
The app I used decided that we are all still in the late 90’s, so all the pictures were low resolution. I shall try uploading some again in higher resolution.
It’s kinda hard to say what Heredia is like, because it’s kind of like any busy city centre, but it looks different (hey, maybe because it is). I’ve not really spent too much time in any similar city or country, so I can’t exactly go “it’s just like Panama” (though it probably is).
My homestay mum, Mizonil, was out this afternoon and her son was here, and speaks very good English. We decided I deserved a "cheat day", and we had pizza and spoke English all evening. Oh wow, I had forgotten how good it feels. At school students in my class talk briefly before and after class, but we are encouraged to not hang out together until we can have our conversations in Spanish -- this makes sense, it forces us to interact with people using what Spanish we know.
So having a cheat day was such a relief, it made me realise how stressful it is not being able to speak the language. I walk out of my bedroom door and before every interaction I have to first think how I can say it in the easiest way, and what words I need to lookup first.
So every Sunday, at least for a few hours, I will have a "cheat day" and eat bad food and speak English!
I'm hesitant to post a positive update, since the last two times I did that things then turned to custard.
Monday I'm in a different class, another beginners one, but this time everyone has zero previous experience with Spanish. I'm happy about this. It's also my first week with private tuition. 8am to midday group class, then 1pm to 3pm for private. Gonna be intense.
On that note, I've done a bunch more self study this weekend, and am feeling better. My spanish is still very low, I catch words now, but that is at least something. I understood the word for breakfast, and the word for eight, so I figured that breakfast was at 8am. I was right.
I went down to, forgive me, a Walmart (yes, there's a Walmart in Heredia) to buy a bunch of cheap things. Notably cheap shoes. The reason? I only have hiking boots and jandals, and I want something in between.
I'm going to try adapting my morning routine somewhat. 6am wake up and go for a maybe 20-30min run, get back around 6:45am, shower, change, then breakfast at 7am, and walk to school at 7:30am for the 8am start. I suspect I'll only do that 3 days a week, but we shall see. Next blog post might be "nope, not gonna exercise".
Hopefully classes are easier this week.
