The school in Montanita was very good. Though still far from fluent, I’d say Bobby and I are now able to understand 25% of the time (as opposed to -5%). We can communicate well enough to navigate in most situations and USUALLY things go smoothly. The hardest part for me is thinking before I speak. I know some of you will get a chuckle out of this. Well, I’ll admit I tend to say what’s on my mind with immediacy and few edits. In Spanish, I’ve found this gets me about halfway into a sentence and then I’m stuck trying to get my way out of it with some semblance of intelligabilitymenteondo….Right…So, if I pause and take just a moment to form the sentence in my head, I can usually say what I want to say. It might not be in the same form or phrasing I would use in English. And I usually have to find a way to say it in present tense. But it’s amazing what you can say in present tense if it’s required! When I have long taxi rides, I get bolder and more experimental trying out crazy things like past tense, reflexives (which blow my mind by the way) and gerunds. They can’t get away from me and they are usually bored enough to help me say it correctly if I screw it up. Bobby’s better at understanding others and retaining vocabulary than I am (especially words having to do with food, which I find very amusing). I seem to understand the conjugations and sentence structures better. And I’m less worried about sounding like an idiot. So I speak with more ease at this point (though I’m not sure that will last long). Put us together and we make a decent team.
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