Last night's first Spanish class

So…I had my first class last night. It was fun!! I was pretty nervous when I first arrived; a guy walked in who started chatting up the teacher in Spanish and I thought, “Oh great, everyone is going to know Spanish very well and I’m going to have a hard time of it.” There are 8 of us in the class 3 men and 2 women and at 42 I’m guessing I’m the youngest (or at least seem to be). After we got going for a while, I found I probably have a lot more experience than the others, but talking still is very hard for me. Speaking in English in front of people is difficult (and yet I have to do presentations all the time for groups of people…funny, that), so I guess it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that another language is hard.

I found the whole experience very interesting! The class is very, very basic in regard to grammar and vocabulary. I realize now how much that I already do know. We learned to say Hola, Buenos días, Cómo se llama, Me llamo, Pues bastante bien....etc. This is all stuff I knew and there were so many times I wanted to add words, but I kept quiet. What was so fun and interesting is that during most of the class, our teacher would randomly choose two people and have them converse using words or phrases that we had learned over the evening. That was truly hard, but very fun. No writing it down, no memorizing what the last person just said, just spitting it out off the top of your head and then answering questions from the person you are conversing with.

My tongue had a hard time of it, until maybe near the end…but my brain was cracka-lackin!!! It felt like electricity was crackling through my head and exciting new nerve endings that hadn’t been connected before. Speech uses something entirely different than reading, apparently.

On the way home I found myself having more conversations, with myself, in the truck, using those class words plus a bigger vocabulary than I thought I could remember. I also listened to Spanishpod and for some reason could follow along with Lili in Spanish better than usual. Some channel or connection was bridged in class.

I realized something about accents, too. Our teacher speaks British English with a Spanish accent ~ V de vaca sounds like B as in ball ~ when she speaks. She also knows a bit of Chinese, so I haven’t figured out her accent, but I did realize that I have picked up some kind of accent. I say and pronounce Spanish the way I have learned so far from listening to Spanishpod, I guess and her pronunciations were somewhat different. It’s very cool. My “d” sounds like “th” and sometimes my “y” or “ll” sound like a “J”. My “v” sounds like a soft “b” or “v” sometimes and my "r" sounds a little like a "t". My trilled "r" is a little too pronounced...I try to hard I think. Her sounds were a little different.

I’m excited to get back next Monday and play again!!!

Maybe if things work out, there will be a similar, yet more advanced class at KSC this summer. Again, it all falls back to a big thanks to Spanishpod. That site and my friends there have changed my life for the better, in a big way! A big shout out to Leo, JP, Lili & Esti!!