Guus Bosman

The Spanish course I followed is over. It was a useful introduction, and it gave me quite some exposure to the Spanish language.

There is a summer break now, in the fall a new course will start. I certainly want to continue my study, later this year.

Last night I went for the first time by bike to my Spanish course. The course is in a school on Quincy street, near the Arlington library.



It was the 11th lesson yesterday night, and I really start noticing my progress. I must admit that I'm usually pretty tired during the class, but it's very useful and I've learned a lot. Last night we dealt with prepositions of location.



When I biked home it was dark, and I am not very satisfied with the head light on my bike. In the U.S. most bikes have battery-operated lights, and the ones I have don't exactly give a lot of light. Enough to be clearly visible in traffic, but not really strong enough to actually light the road where I'm riding -- not very pleasant. I'll see if there is a battery model that gives more light, or perhaps I should switch to a dynamo light (available if you order it).

Tonight I made fourth Spanish lesson.

We studied the names of the season and the weather today, and the grammar was about the "going to" construction with ir + a + verb. I really feel I'm learning new things quickly with this course, a nice feeling.

Sasha's French lessons finish a bit earler so she was waiting for me in the school where we have our classes and we walked back home together.

Tuesday evening I had my first Spanish lesson. I had to pick up the books before 5.30 pm, so I left work earlier and went to the office of Arlington Adult Education. I bought the books, a textbook and a workbook, and got a salad and bread from Wholefoods and had dinner at home.

I took the metro to Virginia Square, and from there I walked to the Washington Lee high school. It was a good 15 minute walk, longer than I expected but I made it on time for the class and sat down before the teacher came in.

The teacher, Ms. Morrocho, is originally from Peru and has a PhD in education, so she is well-qualified. It's really nice to be back in the school benches.

Since this is the first official course I take in Spanish, I wasn't sure if this would be the correct level for me (I started at level 2)but it turns out to be just right -- not to easy, not to hard. Today I am reading up the chapters for level 1, to make sure I have all the grammar and vocabulary ready.

I'll go to a Spanish language course tonight!

Sasha found an adult education program in Clarendon that offers a variety of courses, including foreign languages. She signed up to continue her French study, and I will start at "Beginners II" for Spanish.

I've been doing some self-study of the last six months, but my experiences with the German course that I followed in 2004 were really good -- I like to have some structure around my studying.

Today I'll be traveling home, the documents I came here for are ready and the customer likes them, so my work is done.

On the way to here last Sunday I studied Spanish words in the plane, and that worked very well. Yesterday night I downloaded a few free educational programs that I will try out in the plane.

I looked for tools that contain the pronounciation of the words, and one tool I like a lot is Words Galore.