Yep, we are still working hard on it! Our language learning is continuing to go well. There are days when it can be frustrating, when we can’t communicate with those around us like we would like to, but overall we are happy with the progress that we have made. In the difficult times it is helpful to reflect back to where we were when we arrived and to compare it to where we are now.
Our days of Spanish look somewhat like this: study for an hour in the morning before school (once a week we treat ourselves to an americano and cappuccino), two hours of one on one language school, lunchtime at the office (conversation in Spanish), two hours of tutoring in the afternoon, dinner with our host family (conversation in Spanish) and a couple hours of studying and playing with the kiddos at night (all in Spanish).
I guess I haven’t had a newborn, but I can say that I have never been more tired! It seems like I need at least 10 hours of sleep to be ready for a new day of language learning. We will continue on “this schedule” until March when we will evaluate where we are at in our learning. We are hoping to start off the school year at UPOLI at this time.
On an encouraging note, we went to church today and were both able to understand the majority of the sermon. There were a few words here and there that we needed to look up in our dictionary, but overall we were quite pleased.
Now for the talking part…
As my mom said tonight on Skype, “our receptive language comes faster than our productive language.” We are feeling like we are at a point where we can listen and understand quite a bit, but spitting out the words is a whole other matter.
3 comments:
Way to go you guys!!! That is a LOT of hard work. I have to say, those note cards with the hair elastic remind me a LOT of college days living with Cassie:)
Oh Mir! Thanks for the encouragement. And remember, it is a hair binder!
Wowzers! Remember the 20 minutes a day spanish tapes.
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