spanish, redux

ok, so remember back when i was brushing up my spanish skills for the peace corps?  you may remember that I had almost seven years of spanish classes and passed the CLEP test with the equivalent of two years of college spanish credit.  so my spanish should be serviceable, right?  well, not so fast.  not only was that about 100 years ago, but the classes I took were very poor on the speaking aspect.  add to that the fact that I subsequently learned german and my brain seems to operate in a dichotomous english/non-english fashion, and my ability to recall and speak spanish is located somewhere between “slim” and “none”. 

so I’m taking yet another spanish class.  (if only my memory was really sharp, I could practically teach it by now.)  i wanted to take conversation 2 to kick-start my memory and get me actually speaking, but that class got cancelled.  so I’m currently taking spanish conversation 1.  it’s a bit of a task to sit through this class, I must admit.  if we have to count to thirty or recite the days of the week one more time, I might scream.  it’s way too basic, and yet it’s probably good that I ended up starting here.  I still have a hard time coming up with words in spanish (though I recognize them when I see them), but I am able to speak some basic sentences and name some core things.  I even left a voicemail in spanish for someone the other day.  ok, I had to practice it 20 times before I called, but I did it.

I spoke a little bit of Spanish while I was in Guatemala.  not much, but it was enough to make me smile.  there wasn’t really much need for it, but I tried to use it to order food in restaurants and a little bit at the hotel in Antigua  I also had to do a presentation in my class the other day, which wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.  it was very very simple, mind you, but I wrote it pretty much off the top of my head and only had to look up one or two words.

just don’t ask me to say anything extemporaneously.  or in german.  now my brain is completely befuddled.