Number 13   

Learn Spanish the Hard Way:

 Wait until you are 67

I have good intentions, in fact I like to think they are usually great intentions.  We moved to Costa Rica and I planned to take immersion Spanish classes.  For those of you that may not know what immersion classes are …. I will describe it as being thrown into the deep end of a pool holding a 10 pound weight and being expected to do laps up and down the pool.

Nevertheless, I signed up for 16 hours of group Spanish classes.  I figured I can get lost in a group (or at least hide).  So I paid my $200 and they tell me that there were no group classes at my level (which is beginners).  They will offer me 12 hours of private lessons for the same fee.  In retrospect, at that point, I should have run as fast as I could for the door.  But, naively I said OK.

I will have four days of 3 hours of Spanish each day.  Let’s start there… do you know how long 3 hours can feel?   Especially when the teacher is only teaching you, only asking you questions, only wanting you to speak in Spanish (absolutely no English allowed). 180 minutes of this for 4 days. An interesting thing about time is that each day when it was 11:30, time slowed to a creep.

After 2 days (that is 6 hours of Spanish, Spanish, Spanish and more Spanish) I was fried!  My brain was mush.  I barely had enough energy to get back home.  It is almost impossible to describe the physical, emotional and psychological effects of that much focused intensity.  What was I thinking for God’s sake, I am 67 years old?  I have been speaking English for 66 of those years.  Whatever made me think I could learn a new language?  My brain is tired.  It does NOT want to be conjugating verbs in Spanish, I am not sure I could conjugate verbs in English.

The school suggest a student take a month if these immersion classes.  My self- esteem could not handle it. Why doesn’t my tongue move the right way, why can’t I roll those R’s?  It is the most humbling experience I have ever had.  I sat at my little desk singing nursery songs with my teacher in Spanish. 

After 9 hours I felt a great sense of relief not because I had accomplished a mile stone, but because I knew I could complete one more day.   So, ok I did it. I finished 12 hours of private Spanish classes.

  I wish I had words of wisdom from this experience. The only thing I can take away from it is if I hear another person from the US say “let them learn English” I will either tell them to move to a foreign country and see for themselves how difficult speaking a foreign language really is or slap them silly.