Spanish class

¡Buenos Noches!

Mike and I are enrolled in an Intensive Spanish I class held at a local community college. We go for 2 hours a night, twice a week and tomorrow is our final class.

Neither of us speaks Spanish (although I took classes YEARS AGO) and it has been challenging! We are learning lots of vocabulary, grammar, verb tenses, masculine vs. feminine usage and plural vs. singular usage. The class size has dwindled over the 5 weeks and only 6 students attended last night. So what does that mean?? It means our professora calls on each of us more often! YIKES One of us (I won't say if it's Mike or me) studies more diligently and has a “relatively easier” time when called upon. The other of us "wings it" and has made some hilarious mistakes which have resulted in making the entire class laugh and applaud.

Our final assignment is to bring in a magazine (Mike’s bringing a Harley HOG Tales and I have a Realtor magazine – who would have guessed, huh?) and we will share our magazines with the other students and describe (in Spanish) the people we see in the magazines.

We'll get a certificate tomorrow night and we plan to register for Intensive Spanish II for winter quarter. We try to use Spanish at home (and with Sitka, our perro) as much as possible, but we both tend to invent our own words when we are stuck. And sometimes I'll throw in some sign language when I am at a loss for the Spanish word. My former sign language teachers would cringe I am sure...

So even though people have advised us that we don’t need to know Spanish to move to Mexico and teach English, we have made several trips to Mexico and always wished we could better communicate and now we’re giving it our best shot.

Blogging

As I read the 5 blogs that got me interested in blogging in the first place I now realize that I need to post to our own blog more often!

We're working on organizing on what to bring to Mexico, what to sell, what to give away and what to throw away. WOW! So here I sit in my home office in Duvall, WA trying to decide what electronic equipment I just have to take with me to Mexico. My laptop and Mike's laptop, of course. Our printer/photo maker/copy/fax machine comes next. I'm not sure about our modem and if we'll be able to work wirelessly - how does that work? And what about paper, envelopes, photo paper, print cartridges. I decided I'd leave the laser printer because the ink jet printer has so many other features. Is this a good idea?

And after we bought the Nissan truck with the extended cab and A/C (see initial post) we sold our Toyota truck - sold it in a heartbeat on Craigslist. We could not believe how many calls/emails we had about that 20-year old truck! Since I last wrote we have also sold our Acura (for a great price) and we've had some inquiries about the Harley. Mike took it for a spin today. I know it will be hard for him to part with the Fatboy.

I ordered and received my holiday cards that I will soon be sending out. I think I'll let everyone know about the blog...that will get me to write more often.

Hola!

Sitka

We thought about leaving our doggie behind, but then one day Mike started talking to her in Spanish and we knew she had to come with us. So we bought a truck with an extended cab for her seat and with A/C so we won't all melt.

She's 9 years old and she's been with us for 6 years. She is a purebred German shepherd and she LOVES her new truck!