Fried Brain Confessions

In the past seven days of school I have been exposed to 240 verbs, most of them irregular and my brain is fried AND I cannot carry on a decent conversation with a six year old. If you are in a hurry, that just about sums it up, but if you have time I will continue to share my experience of my foreign language immersion experience.

I say I have been exposed to 240 new verbs in the past seven days of my Level 2 Spanish instruction which is not exactly the same as saying I have learned and memorized 240 new verbs (most of them irregular) in the following persons: I, familiar You, formal You/He/She/It, We, familiar plural You, and formal plural You/He/She/It. If a verb is regular and ends in 'ar', then the endings for the aforementioned six person types are o-as-a-amos-áis-an. Similar rules exist for regular verbs that end in 'er' and 'ir', but I won't bore you with those endings. And all of this is in the present tense. Level 1 dealt with mostly standard verbs and also the past tense and a bit of a trick to speak in the future tense using the verb 'to go' to say 'going to "action/verb"'. We might have had four irregular verbs in the eighty verbs we learned. I hope this is not too boring, stick with me and I will try to say something funny before I end this blog.

In my first seven days of Level 2, the 240 verbs that I have been taught (also not the same as learned and remembered) are organized in 8 groups. The first group is the regular "ar", "er", and "ir" verbs. The next 7 groups, each with subgroups, are the irregular verbs and if I was to explain what made every group and subgroup irregular, I would never finish this blog. I can proudly say that when the group is explained to me, I think I understand perfectly, until the next group is presented and it immediately pushes what was ever in my brain out through my ear and on to the floor. An example of a rule could be "when a verb ends in 'cer', the first person conjugation will end in 'zco' instead of 'co', unless a consonant immediately precedes the 'cer'; in those cases the first person conjugation will end in 'zo'". Right! 240 verbs and most of them irregular, with seven different sets and subsets of rules on how to conjugate them differently. One of the verbs I was exposed to today was " to ski". I looked at that verb and said to my teacher, "For heaven's sake! I am in Guatemala! Why are you trying to teach me the verb "to ski"? I refuse to learn it!" Of course, now that I made a big deal of it, the verb 'esquiar' is burned in my brain and is taking up space other more valuable verbs could be occupying.

I really do like my Level 2 teacher, she does make learning fun. She's energetic, jokes and we are probably the loudest teacher/student pair in the school right now (of course that might be because I am hard of hearing and I don't know how loud I am talking and she is talking loud so I can hear her). Last Friday she asked me to go to our white board and conjugate about 15 verbs in all six person present tense conjugations. I started doing the conjugations and after about two, I stopped and said, "Our 1:1 teaching time is valuable and it is a waste of time for me to conjugate while you just sit there. I don't mind doing it, but make it homework, not part of our 1:1 time". And I had to convey that all in Spanish. But she replied in Spanish, "OK, Marvin, our time is gold". At first I thought, "It's my money", but then I remembered more accurately that I am able to take this trip because others believed enough in me to support me financially. So I am being a good steward of our investment. My typical day is six hours of class and another three hours of homework, whew! My teacher is pretty impressed. Today she said that when I was young I must have been REALLY intelligent and now I was very intelligent. Actually she might have just said I was intelligent and left off the 'very'. I think that had to be the most positive insult I have ever received. Well, tonight's homework had the verb 'esquiar' in it and I crossed the question out and did not do it. We shall see what she has to say tomorrow.

The Christian Spanish Academy language school has been established for twenty years and most of the teachers have at least ten or more years teaching Spanish to non-Spanish speaking students from many different nations. Also if you choose to stay with a family, all of the families are vetted. The family I am staying with has been hosting students for at least ten years and it is expected that the families continue the teaching experience and not speak English to you. However, they understand English and when you say something incorrect or can't find a word, they will say the correct translation or give you the word if it does not come. All of this is to say in the cocoon, surrounded by people experienced in hearing their language mangled by students attempting to learn it, I can communicate some fairly complex conversations. However, my experiences in the wild are not yet that successful. I often just go sit in the central park and often someone will talk to me. If it is someone wanting to learn English, they attempt their English, I attempt my Spanish and we have an enjoyable time of learning together. Once I was talking to an older Japanese widow that lived near Antigua for four years but still spoke Japanese at home with her sons. Perhaps because Spanish was a learned language for her and she was not extremely proficient, we had a very successful discussion. BUT, if I find myself talking to someone that is not an experienced language instructor, has no experience or interest in English and Spanish is their heart language, we can reach the universally understood "huh?" fairly quickly, accompanied by the usual blank look on both of our faces. I am always at a disadvantage in that game because I am trying to play on what is clearly their home field.

Three more days of class and then it is on to San Miguel Chicaj where I hope to get more field experience. And for those of you that read my last blog, yes I did survive and I remain among the living. Monday I was still moving slow but today I feel pretty good.