Our first day in Spanish class!! Drum role please……I survived! Not only did I survive my first day in Spanish class, I actually enjoyed it! And I must have been having fun cuz’ time flew by pretty fast! Even though Scott learns annoyingly fast, I tried not to compare myself to his freaky, crazy smartness! Smartness? (is that even a word?) Well, in spite of our vastly different speed, learning new things with Scott is something I never tire of. He is incredibly encouraging, patient,helpful and supportive beyond belief! There’s truly no one I would rather be diving into this adventure with but him.
We were in a class with only one other person, a 37 year old guy who is here in Boquete for two weeks studying spanish and then going to Bocas Del Toro for two more weeks to study spanish there. Luckily, he was pretty similar to me in his experience of the Spanish language so that made me feel good. Our teachers name is Yubal. He is a good teacher, I really like him a lot. It’s really good that Yubal doesn’t speak much English. It makes it hard to get him to make it easy for me. It felt so good to occasionally understand what he was attempting to say. Four hours of lessons is rather taxing on the old noggin’ but I may actually comprehend at least some of what we learned today. We have a book to study and we did just that as we ate dinner tonight. Scott helped me study some of the numbers. We will be quizzed tomorrow on two pages of phrases. It’s 8:30Pm and we just finally decided it was time to rest our brains.
Today we got a call from Oscar telling us that our new truck is ready to be picked up. We will catch the first bus, which we’re told is 7:00am. The Toyota dealership opens at 8:30 so we should be there ready to become proud owners of our very own truck, yippee! After driving off with our new truck we plan to take a quick trip to find a broom and dustpan, and a mixing bowl. Three things we discovered we need here in our new apartment. Poco a Poco we are settling in here! And Poco a Poco we are becoming bi-lingual ! One of these days I’ll be writing a post in Spanish and you’ll have to use Google Translate to read it! But for now I will enjoy my classes and learning something new together, which is always and Adventure! Ciao for now!
Let The Adventure "Continue"! 
Estoy feliz que usted le gusta la primera clase de español. Practica mucho!
Su amiga,
Janell
Te gustas margaritas mucho, como no? (sorry, don’t know how to do the upside down question mark…)
Buenos suerte con su español. Be patient with yourself, and laugh at your mistakes. I have made many BIG embarrassing mistakes. For example, I’ve wished everyone a happy new anus instead of a happy new year, I offered our workers bread with penis instead of bread with pineapple, and I asked someone to love me instead of call me. Haha. But, they were gracious and laughed along with me. I didn’t want to learn the ‘bad’ words because I was afraid I might accidentally slip them into a conversation. However, once when I was looking for the little town of Merida, I asked where I could find sh***t instead. I had no idea why the nice gentleman on his bicycle started laughing and said, “No! Palabra mala.” (No! Bad word). I still get the word ‘sh**t’ mixed up with the word afraid’. So, I never say I’m afraid of anything. lol
Oh, thank you so much for your encouraging words! I’m finding that the laughing at myself is the best tool in this learning experience. Your words mean so much to me and really encourage me to be patient with myself as I struggle through this very exciting new venture. Ive never learned a new language and its daunting to say the least, but hearing your stories really bolster my confidence and encourage me to soldier through!! I got this!! Muchas Gracias me amiga!! Cheers!!
De nada mi amiga! 🙂
You are so lucky to be able to learn a second language. Would love to join you and learn Spanish. Chris
Buena suerte con sus lecciones en español. – Mike
And the drink doesn’t look too shabby either! Nice to know you can still get good refreshments while learning – don’t know if they help or hinder though 🙂 Happy studying!
Que bueno!