Some of you may know that I'm off to Colombia in three weeks! And the scary part is that I don't know any Spanish... until last night that is. My mom came over for pancakes (and maple syryp, might I add - thanks to my friend in los Estados Unidos!) and decided that I must learn some basic phrases. My mom is has a knack for languages - in addition to Finnish and English, she speaks fluent French and Spanish. A few years back she even managed to keep a conversation in Malay with the taxi drivers, but I think she's forgotten that now since it's practically impossible to keep up your Malay in Finland.
Anyway, my mom taught me the basics like greetings and asking how you are. This will come in very handy because my boss, who I'm traveling with, doesn't speak any Spanish either and from what I've heard it's not common for Colombians to speak English.
In addition to this minilesson from my mom, I remembered that there are free language lesson podcasts available on iTunes. I immediately (!) downloaded and subscribed to two language learning courses in Spanish. I haven't had a chance to listen to them yet because I started exploring the Internet site for the other one, www.discoverspanish.com. It has an online program which teaches Spanish, six free lessons, after which if you want to continue, you can buy all the lessons. Since I don't have time for a language course at this stage, with only three weeks till my departure, I think this is the way to go. I've now completed three lessons and I'm really enthusiastic about this!
Let's hope I can keep up this enthusiasm.. I usually learn the basics of languages quite easily, but when it gets to the hard stuff like grammar, I seem to get a block! So do wish me luck!
Hasta luego!
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6 months ago
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