On Learning Spanish

Have you ever studied another language?

Somehow I got all the way through highschool and 3 years of college without learning a language.  I have had a passion to travel Europe since I was a kid!  But that passion never included learning another language!  Ha!  I remember even saying that if I were to go to another country I would learn the language of the locals.  I would try not to rely on English alone.

Funny how things change when you're in a situation.  Ha!

When we moved to Russia I knew we would be learning the language, going to class 4 times a week for 3 hours a day.  Russian is tough.  The letters are Cyrillic, the cases are hard, the endings change.  I was a slow learner, but I was getting it.  We studied on this schedule for 14 months, going 4 days a week.  Then once we moved to our city of Bryansk, we still continued studying, but it was more like twice a week. 
But then we moved to Prague.  By this point I was burned out on language learning that I couldn't even comprehend trying to learn Czech!!  However, I was ready to leave Russian behind and concentrate on Czech.
Because of our roll in an office setting we didn't get much language learning.  I think we had a tutor twice a week for two hours.  It wasn't much at all, but we were getting the basics.
God decided to keep us going in the Russian language as we began to meet Russian speakers who had immigrated from Moldova, Ukraine and many other Russian speaking countries.  And God saw fit for us to be a part of a Russian speaking house church.
During those first couple of years in Prague we were speaking English during the week at work, speaking Russian on Sundays and various hours here and there throughout the week and a little bit of Czech learning in class or when going to the store.
Our Russian began to suffer, our Czech increased a bit and our English probably suffered a bit too because we began to blank out on English words!  Ha!

And then.....enter Spanish!!  Now, I was really excited to be able to speak Spanish.

Did you see how I said that??

Excited to be able to speak.  I didn't say excited to go through the pains of learning Spanish.  Hee hee!

As you can see, I am not much of a linguist.  I would love to be one of those people who could spout out some Russian, turn around and spout out some Czech and then turn and spout out some Spanish.  I could probably do it, but it would take a minute for my brain to do all that switching.   I'd love to be really good in one or two of those languages.  But honestly, I stink at learning languages.

And of course there are all the excuses I could come up with.

"I'm 10 years older than I was when I learned Russian."

or

"I have 3 kids now, I have no TIME to study!"

or

"I'm sick."

"I need to put some laundry in."

"I need to go grocery shopping."

It is very easy to come up with all kinds of excuses not to study.  However, I am not going to be able to communicate unless I put my nose to the grindstone and get busy.  So, I must.

About 2 weeks ago I started meeting with a tutor, once a week for 2 hours.  It isn't much (we don't have much budget for language), but she is wonderful and the time I have with her is helping!  I needed that planned meeting time to keep me motivated.  Otherwise it is to easy for me to say "mañana (later)!"

Jerry was given some study money and is in the midst of a semi break from work until December to study Spanish.  He is attending Universidad Complutense de Madrid one of the oldest universities in the world.  He is learning a ton, but the demanding hours has been a bit difficult for our family.  We know there is an end in sight and we'll push through until the end, December 21st at 5 pm!  Ha!


So, I will do my best to get myself organized, laying out a plan to be faithful to study the Spanish language.  Here's praying anyway!!


And because my girls can't be left out of a picture, here they are!!  Sweet things!!