My Secret Life

I guess that most of you know that I have been learning Spanish for the last thirty weeks or so. I made the resolution to study another language on the way home from New York last year and had pretty much decided that the language would be Spanish. Then I met my first Colombian student who said that he wanted to teach me. After a few classes he got a girlfriend and didn't have the time or inclination to teach me anymore.

So I started at a language school- my language school to be precise. And another course after that and I have just finished my third course. It has been an enormously satisfying experience plus I think that being a student has really helped to improve my teaching- though it is hard to improve on perfection(!)

I have listened to songs in Spanish and understood parts of them, I have read an entire book in Spanish (that turned out to be quite gruelling work but a great acheivement) and most importantly, I can now understand some of what is going on when my students speak to the other in Spanish.

All those little things that I used to miss (like knowing what the local latino criminals in CSI are saying to each other, in fact any of the little snippets in Spanish that crop up in adverts and on programmes) I now have a better grasp of.

Sometimes I am even able to make a joke that my English friends don't understand which feels good. I tend to think of my secret Spanish life- a part of my life that those who don't understand a word of Spanish can't really enter. It is another part of my life that has changed so much in the last year. I am mostly listening to Colombian music these days and try to always read Spanish on the train.

And then suddenly I have hit a brick wall- I seem to have lost all of my Spanish abilities in the last two weeks!! Which is scary because my first real practical application is coming up in five wees- my trip to Colombia. Where once my head was full of Spanish words now there is a gaping void of emptiness! My tongue which so readily tried to roll those r's is now reluctant to go beyond an hola!

Yikes!! I am scared.

I really need to apply myself more- back to the books this week and time to knuckle down, nose to the grindstone and all that. I went to a Colombian restaurant with my friend Sarh on Friday and we bumped into Colombian students- though not our students, we just recognised each other from the school- and they spoke to me in Spanish and I felt that I didn't understand as mh as I should have done...bad student! Must work harder.

On another note--- look what I found on my desk this week:

yes it is a scary chocolate cat sculpture



Just what I always wanted and never knew that I did

It came from a guy in the this class

who claims to be my Colombian husband and is slightly less scary than the cats! And, yes, I have recently worked out how to get photos off my phone and onto the PC:)