My First Attempt at Learning Spanish

Nosotros terminamos clases el español y es hora de salir de nuestra casa. (We finished Spanish classes and it is time to leave our homestay)

Spanish Classes I want to start by saying that I do feel like I have learned a lot during the 5 days and I understand that there was no way I was going to become fluent in Spanish in such a short amount of time.

I am a lot more comfortable with reading and writing than I am speaking and listening. My brain has a hard enough time sounding things out in English, so trying to wrap my head around the Spanish sounds has been challenging to say the least. I found a lot of the basics, like the letter E making an eh sound and the letter I making an ee sound, hard to remember while speaking. My brain automatically switches the sounds back to English. For some of the harder pronunciations my teacher, Norma, gave me some tongue twisters to practice: - La llave amarilla está en la casilla del callejon Translation: The yellow key is in the alley square

- él gitano gira la página del gerente con gentileza Translation: the gypsy turns the manager's page gently

- Josefina y Juanito van por el paisaje Juntos a Jipi-Japa Translation: Josefina and Juanito go through the landscape Together with Jipi-Japa (a shoe company in Ecuador)

-  César y Cecilia tienen cinco cielos de cuidar Translation: Caesar and Cecilia have five heavens to care for

I'd also like to give a shout out to my friend Hannah for sending me this:

¡fue muy útil!

On top of that the French I took in high school (which I didn't think I remembered much of) has found its way back into my head, so when I am trying to count in Spanish it goes something like this: Una, dos, tres, quatre, cinq, seis, sept, ocho, nueve, diez. Confused? Me too!

Homestay We chose to do a homestay while we were studying Spanish because we wanted to reinforce and practice what we were learning in class. Our homestay familia consisted of a wife and husband, Susanna and Alejandro and their adult son Alexis. Susanna spoke a tiny bit of English but that was it, so we had to use what we were learning or in my case consulting Google Translate!

The family was extremely patient with us and were really helpful in correcting and teaching us as we went. I also really enjoyed the time spent watching fútbol with Alexis, as we both shouted at the tv or celebrated a goal! I got to watch Liverpool's opening game and a Copa Libertadores match. Once again proves that football is a truly global language! (Sign me up for those classes!)

Tiffany and I with Susanna and Alejandro

Frustrations aside, this has been a good experience for me. For one thing, I think it shows how far I have come as a student, when I hit these kind of road blocks in middle and high school I would do everything I could to quit. Now I am trying power through them and I understand frustrations are part of the process. It has also given me a base to build off of over the next 11 months! As international travelers we know that attempting to learn and speak the language goes a long way!