We are nearing the completion of our 15th week of language school. We’ve accomplished a lot and can come quite close to holding a basic conversation in Spanish….as long as everyone is “fine” and the weather is “nice” and “we are students studying Spanish – please speak slowly.”
But, last week, I spoke for 30 minutes about my life and my spiritual journey. During our week-long break for Easter, I had written 6 pages of my story in English and then translated it to Spanish to present it to my class.
This week, I led a 45-minute study and discussion of concepts in the Bible that relate to God’s sovereignty in our lives when things happen that aren’t easy to understand. These two events were the most exciting for me in my language acquisition process because I was finally able to speak about something personal to me.
It is such a “process” though – this language learning thing – and sometimes it’s shocking how much of a conversation I catch. And then other times, equally shocking when I can’t even respond correctly to a greeting of someone on the street!
As we near the end of our first trimester, though, we are (at the same time) content and dissatisfied with our Spanish. Content that we have a solid foundation and that we’ve survived and it appears we’ll be passing on to the next class…so we must have learned something! But dissatisfied with the amount we know and how easily tripped up we get.
So, we’re looking forward to a summer of practice and returning to Grammar II in the fall!
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