Adventures On the Road

After leaving Mexico and being inspired by a potential Mexican beachfront lifestyle, Nathan and I decided it was time to really learn how to speak Spanish.  We need to know more than the traditional “hola, uno mas cervesa por favor, de nada’ if we’re going to spend more time in Mexico.

So, we invested in the Levels 1, 2 and 3 of Rosetta Stone – each level is supposed to be the equivalent of 2 semesters of university spanish.  BIG expectations!

They believe in total immersion, so there is no english translation, instead you learn through pictures, hearing native speakers and general intuition.  You learn pronunciation, grammer, reading, writing and vocabulary.  The software is a lot of fun, and I flew through the first unit.   So, all of a sudden, I’m at the first Milestone, which essentially tests what you’ve learned.  This Milestone was a series of pictures, and from these pictures I was supposed to know what to say!!  All I have to say, is there were 12 questions (phrases that I was supposed to know how to say) and the only one that I got right was “hola” and that’s only because they said it first and I was just repeating it!!!

So, maybe it’s not quite so easy, maybe I need to focus a little bit more.  I feel like I’m back in school and the pressure is on!  I’m finding that the pronunciation is tough!  They do not let you slack off and if you don’t say it exactly right, you don’t get to pass.  I swear I spent 10 minutes trying to say “tres” despite the fact that that’s pretty much my name.

Anyway, I haven’t been sure awhat I’ve been retaining.  Nathan and I just keep saying “manzanas” (apples), “caballo” (horse) and other random spanish words at each other.  And apparently, my favourite phrase, my “go-to” phrase, is “La bicicleta es amarilla.” The bicycle is yellow.   I don’t think that this is going to come in handy in too many conversations.

I was seriously doubting the success of the software and my learning capacity UNTIL this weekend when we were standing in a crowd watching a show in Toronto and I was easvesdropping on conversations, I picked up “camisa es roha” There was a couple standing beside me and they were talking about someone in a red shirt, or someone beside someone in a red shirt.  Either way, I recognized that they were talking about something about a red shirt.  SUCCESS!