School's out ... but much practice needed

(Have included some audio files of our Spanish classes in this post - hope they work for you.)

It's difficult to describe how intense and exhausting our Spanish lesson experience has been.  The concentration required when everything is in a foreign language is incredible.  By then end of 2 hours of grammar class my head is spinning, but then we followed up with 2 hours of practice lessons. EVERYTHING is in Spanish .... and we hang in their listening for any words we recognise to pick up the gist of the explanation.  And a few gestures also help.

Mimi:  Profesora explaining verbs  and more   and present tense  and mucho more
You can occasionally hear our contributions in these lessons - either 'Si' or repeating a word said by Mimi ....... 

The FairPlay Spanish school usually run individual grammar classes, but agreed to our request to work together.    Would have been even more intense individually - at least one of us had a little 'think' time while the other was providing a response.

Lex providing a response in class

And of course we've had homework as well - and it gets checked each day.  Homework

We've been asked to provide examples for all the grammar elements we've been learning - and then we write down our examples .... Zac tells me it's easy to spell in Spanish - it's phonetic.  Apparently he's a much better speller in Spanish than he is in English.  For us it's been a challenge .... made much worse because we are unsure of the Spanish alphabet ......  Mimi correcting Lex's writing

Our 'practica' teachers at times speak a little slower.  These sessions have been fantastic - going to local markets, museums and even a cemetery with locals.  We did draw lots of looks - standing in shops trying to copy words we were told and then providing the correct article or add adjectives etc - but it's all been good.  We didn't understand every word .... most of the time ... but I'm amazed how much we did understand.   Esme at the textile museum  and more 

Museo de Arte de Ninos

 

Museos de Arte - even here there's lessons ... and flash cards.

  

Cemetery    

The 'empty' spaces - because families have NOT paid annual fee - remains removed and space resold.

We've been to 2 cooking class evenings - more social events than cooking classes, although we were all more involved last week for Papa Rellena.  Delicious too..

 

In lots of ways it's an opportunity for some to speak English.  Most of the people who have signed up for classes have already done quite a bit of Spanish (unlike us).  One fellow did 5 weeks in Bolivia before 4 weeks here.  Others have studied for several years at school.

I think we can interpret and read many more words .... but even in short communication, we are lost!!!  We have only covered present tense, regular (and just a few irregular) verbs - haven't even looked at other tenses so necessary.  There is much more to do - and we may go back for some more, after a short break. The first step is having the confidence to communicate (and stuff it up for sure) - and we had our first boost when communicating with a market trader last Friday when we bought a 'chompa' for Lex.  'Poco a poco' (Little by little).

We finished our week off by having lunch with our 2 Practica teachers - and even that was a language lesson!!!  Thank you to Esme and Nela!!