!Puedo hablar espanol!

About 5 years ago dh decided he needed to learn another language. He started looking for someone to teach him German, but then he met a man at the coffee shop who was teaching Spanish**, and he decided that learning Spanish would be both a) convenient, as the teacher had now been found, and b) practical, as we live in a state where there are regular and multiple opportunities to practice your Spanish with native speakers (i.e., Latin American immigrants).

So dh took Spanish for more than three years. He got to the point where he could listen to the radio or watch TV or order dinner in a restaurant in beautiful, fluent Spanish. When we got lost in Paris, he got us found because he could ask directions of a store proprietor who spoke no English but did speak Spanish. And when we went to Mexico we found many people who loved us, were friendly to us, did nice things for us, just because dh not only knows the language, he does not butcher it with a horrible American accent.

And the whole time dh was taking lessons, he kept encouraging me to take them too. I kept resisting... I'm too busy! I'm homeschooling! I'm no good at learning languages! And besides, can't you just teach me what you're learning? Yes, all true. I did pick up quite a bit of the language from him, especially after figuring out that now that the kids can read and spell, we can still have secret conversations right in front of them if we switch to Spanish! (heh, heh, heh)

But it wasn't formal, and I never got anywhere NEAR fluent. DH leaves me in the dust when it comes to functioning well in the language. However, all that is about to change...

I had my first "real" Spanish lesson today.

It was awesome! DH worked out a deal with his old tutor to come to our office once a week and give group lessons to whomever wants to take them. He's even paying for it, as a little "perk" for being a hardworking employee at our company. I decided to make the time to join in.

Already I can see that this is going to be cool. For one thing, I'm already miles ahead from all the vocabulary that I've learned over the years from dh. For another, we speak only Spanish in class. I'm forced to learn to think in Spanish, instead of just translating. I haven't reached that milestone yet, but I can see how weekly immersion is going to go a long way toward getting there.

I'm psyched.

** An interesting side note here is that our Spanish tutor is from Ecuador. In fact, after about a year of lessons, we discovered that he used to be the Secretary of State of Ecuador. It was only for a few months, back during an era when the government kept getting overthrown. But really, how excellent is it to be learning Spanish from an ex-Secretary of State? You should see his scrapbooks...