Mi escuela

Since the main purpose of me coming here was to attend a Spanish immersion program I think it´s about time I talk about my school. We have class for 7 hours a day. Classes begin at 8am and end at 8pm. We have a 2 hour lunch break which would seem excessive if I did not have to walk 15 to 20 minutes each way for lunch. Classes are 1 on 1 with an instructor who speaks only spanish. The classrooms are small ¨salons¨ that have tin roofs and no door. There are at least 20 of these rooms. Maybe as many as 40. They open up into a lush courtyard with plants, flowers, birds- even an avacado tree. Each week we are given a different instructor. This week, my first week, my professora is named Anna.

Now four days into my class I can say two things. First, that I am already much further along than I was from two weeks of that other class. Second, that my brain has never been so tired. At first I didn´t understand why I would come home, completely drained and end up in bed by 9. Then, yesterday, while listening to people talk in spanish over breakfast it occured to me that my brain is tired because it´s constantly having to work. English is so ingrained in me that I can space out while listening to people talk and still know what is going on more or less. With spanish I have to be thinking constantly, searching for words I recognize in the rapid torrent of gibberish. Those I do recognize need to be processed, runing them against the vast bank of words that have been installed over the past few days, words my brain is not use to accessing yet. It is a real life example of brain mapping in action.

The day is mostly spent in the salon. We have worked through regular verbs, present tense and now theres a lot of memorizing and conjugating and stringing things together into vain attempts at complete sentences. The advantage of the 1 on 1 is that I really get a chance to spend a lot of time awkwardly speaking. We frequently switch between the lesson at hand and conversations that force me to exercise both applying and comprehending my new vocbulary. Some times I think my instructor is frusturated with me. I forget words she has just told me, cannot remember to pronouce my Vs as Bs, and always use bien when I should say bueno and piquito when I should say piquenio. However, I already can feel a vast improvement, and as tired as I am at the end of every day I look forward to what I will be able to do at the end of my fourth week.


This sign cracks me up every day. Be careful with your head.