Spanish!

Instituto Superior de Espanol, Quito

In Spanish class with my teacher, Maria Elisabeth

...So I´ve been studying Spanish for five days now, at the Instituto Superior de Espanol in Quito. I get up around 7am, have breakfast, and walk down the hill to the Institute, where they have outings exploring the city in the mornings with the other students. There are students from the US, Canada, Britain, Sweeden, Haiti, and Holland this week. Some are staying for a number of months, others, like me, are studying in different spots. I have my classes from 1:30 - 5:30pm. Four hours per day, one-on-one is pretty intensive. My Spanish has progressed more in five days than it ever did in a year and a hslf in college.

The routine goes something like this:

Maria Elizabeth goes over a sheet with about 150 irregular verb conjugations. I recognize some of them from when I studied in college, I know some from their silimarity to English or Italian, I mix some up from their similarity to English or Italian, and I get some completely mixed up with words in Korean.

She then drills me on them and gives me reading and speaking exercises, when I have to use them. For good measure and style, I intersperse a number of different ways of saying that I have no clue:

Yo no recuerdo.

Yo no se.

...and my favorite:

No tengo idea.

Sometimes I take a wild stab by using the English word and throwing a vowel on the end:

Es una booka.

It´s been good fun, and the school is really professional and organized. The teachers know what they are doing, and the directors go out of their way to accommodate whatever needs or interests you have, and make it all a good fun time!

Tomorrow morning I am going on a two-day hiking trip down in the mountains to a lagoon formed by a volcano a few hours south of Quito (organized by the Institute). I´m going with one other student from Holland and a guide. Early Monday morning, I will be flying from Quito to the Amazon for my second week of Spanish courses at the Yarina Lodge on the Rio Napo.

I´m guessing I won´t have a great deal of opportunity to jump on the Internet in the middle of the jungle, so this may be my last post for a while.

Below are some photos I shot this morning walking around the Old Town area of Quito this morning with one of the other students.

Michael