Finally decided to leave the Intercultura language school here in Costa Rica. I’ve had about 35 hours of classes solely in Spanish plus a few hours of homework.
What have I learnt? Mainly that I’m a slow learner like I was at school when I was a kid. An interesting life observation is that to succeed at school you need a good short term memory preferably with sufficient capacity to absorb several hours of stuff. In life memory is not rated that highly, thats why we have books & the internet, retrieval of information is most highly rated either by employing the right person to do it or been adept at doing it yourself.
I will maybe go to more classes in Ecuador or maybe in Cusco with Sally for a couple of hours each day :-).
Tomorrow I’m heading off to Turrialba to try and get some more white water rafting experience or canyoning. Then its off to Ecuador to have some fun standing on the Equator, apparently there are loads of tricks and funny things you can do there.
I’ve enjoyed my stay here, especially Nuria’s cooking 🙂 and her sister Ilsen who taught me at the school, Nelson my first teacher was great as well but the rest of the class was way to speedy for me….
Managed to get some DIY in by replacing Nuria’s kitchen sink taps and the loo seat.I really enjoy going to foreign builders merchants to see the real world in action 🙂
Well off for final visit to Samara beach…
glad you have enjoyed part one of your adventure 🙂 BTW thats the first i have heard about having spanish lessons in cusco .. Iam sure my short term memory is no better than yours 🙂
My Grandma used to tell me (since she was fluent in Spanish and English) that if you can learn one language you can learn two. If you want my opinion, it is more about confidence (which was her point) and practice.
The key to learning a “spoken” language quickly is not to learn it in class, do you care if you can read and write in Spanish? No, just talk would be good, so get your phrase book, get into the cafes and try it.
Henry Ford said “…whether you think you can, or whether you think you cannot, either way you will be right!”
Get to it my boy! have a great trip, Hasta Luego.
There is another way – “immersion”. An agency places you with an exclusively Spanish-speaking family and the only way you can get by is to “pick-up” the language spontaneously (or be good at mime!). Phone numbers and addresses of immersion 'schools' are mentioned in guide books like Lonely Planet and the like.
Just an idea.
Our bathroom taps need fixing. Just as well you are thousands of miles away!
Our bathroom taps need fixing. Just as well you are thousands of miles away!