Back to school, Back to school

Its been one week since starting in-person Spanish classes and living with my host family (Loly). Each day contains four hours of in person class learning starting at 1pm. I've quickly found a routine of studying and review in the morning, then eating a lunch and packing my backpack and starting my half mile walk to the school. I appreciate that most classes start with a half hour to and hour of plain conversation. It goes a long way to gaining momentum and getting the brain to actually switch to Spanish. After that though begins the three hours of what I can only describe as brain aerobics. This feeling of always being stretched a little bit harder than you like, and then pretty consistently around 4:30 I'll start to notice a decline in my Spanish abilities as we make the final push to 5pm. My teacher (Amy) has been wonderful, even going so far as to shift some of the vocabulary learning to more machine and equipment terminology.

Irregular verbs in preterite tense is more or less a whole lot of exhausting memorization.

In an effort to help mix things up, and make sure we hear multiple different Honduran speakers, occasionally a field trip will be organized. This past Thursday we visited Serve Hope coffee and got to learn about different brewing methods for coffee.

My experience so far with events like this, or even listening to conversations in Spanish, is a bit like listening to a slightly out of tune radio. For a period of time everything is clear and you are understanding it, then all the sudden the conversation just falls to static and you try focusing hard to bring things back in tune, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Each evening when I get back to the house Loly chuckles as I share how its another day of feeling tired and full of brain fog. She's been nothing but encouraging and her "Comida Catracha" keeps me fueled for the next day.

Keep after it