Back to School

My first week of classes is coming to an end.  It is amazing how different going to school is when you actually want to go. I've often wondered what causes the change in sentiment from utter revulsion to genuine interest. Ask any 10 year old if he'd rather be playing with his friends or attending school, and 99.9% of the time you'll get the friends answer. Even in college when I got to choose classes that seemed interesting, school seemed to lose the battle over running, Halo 3, and alcohol. But now I legitimately want to go.

My school is situated about a block from the main plaza. It's about a 20 minute hilly-walk from my house which I actually enjoy, since it forces me to get in a good 80 minutes of walking throughout the day.

The classrooms are centered around a large courtyard with a few tables and chairs to enjoy the sun.

There are 5 computers and wifi to access free internet so you pretty much have all of the amenities of a regular school.

You can choose between group classes (up to 4 people in the class) or one-on-one lessons, with each class lasting 4-hours. While a little more expensive, I chose the one-on-one classes to try to get back up to speed with Spanish as quickly as possible. A regular day consists of 2 hours of grammar, a 20 minute break, and another 2 hours of more social excercises like reading out loud or watching a movie in Spanish and then explaining what happened.

One last thought... The problem I have with Spanish classes in the US is that they don't actually teach you how to speak fluently. You learn the grammar and some vocabulary, but after a certain level the classes switch to become Spanish versions of their English counterparts (Spanish Literature, History of XXXX Spanish speaking country). There is not nearly enough emphasis on speaking and conversation, which is the whole fucking point of learning another language. I stopped taking Spanish after finishing the grammar classes because my only options were the History of El Salvador, examining the roles of the Mexican Diaspora in the American Southwest, or Chilean poetry. These classes could very well be interesting, but I don't want to be the next Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I want to be able to discuss Bolivian socialism with a student at the university, or flirt with the Colombian girl in the white dress. It is one thing to be able to read or write fluently, or even know what to say in your head... but it is quite another to have a back and forth conversation without thinking. And the only way to become comfortable doing so is to practice speaking. I don't imagine it would be that difficult or expensive to hire a handful of Spanish tutors to just talk with small groups of students for a few times or week, or even pay some of the many native-speaker students to do this as a work-study job.