Daily writing prompt

What’s something most people don’t know about you?

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I don’t know much about the French I took but I do know that I love learning Spanish in creative ways as a 72-year-old. Several times in my life I’ve tried to learn Spanish, but each time I gave up. However, I recently got serious about it. I knew that memorizing vocabulary and grammar had never worked for me, so I decided to try a different approach.

About 10 months ago I began to watch YouTube videos that were completely in Spanish. For an hour or more almost every day I watched Spanish travel videos, documentaries, classes, and sermons. In the beginning I understood almost nothing, but gradually I began to understand more and more.

I also began to read the New Testament out loud in Spanish every single day for 10 minutes or more. (I have daily devoured the Bible for 10 minutes or more all my adult life and it has encouraged and empowered me like no other book. Because of that I know its contents very well and can understand much of it when I read it in Spanish.)

After about 8 months two Mexican families (a total of 4 adults and 5 children) moved into one side of the duplex next to my house. Only one of the family members spoke any English and he spoke very little. My wife and I made friends with both families and the 4 adult Mexican men who moved into the basement, and I suddenly and mysteriously had many people to practice Spanish with.

After about nine months of focusing on absorbing Spanish, I was understanding people who spoke slowly and distinctly but still not getting much when people spoke at the normal rapid rate. Also, when I used Spanish subtitles, I could understand most of what was said on the videos.

However, I suddenly felt prompted to go to Costa Rica to attend Intercultural, a Spanish immersion school, for two weeks. There I had 20 hours of classes presented in Spanish each week (with only 3 students in each class). I stayed in the home of a Spanish speaking family that spoke almost no English, so I had many opportunities to practice my speaking. The two weeks were amazing! I highly recommend Intercultural to anyone who wants to improve their Spanish.

My Spanish grammar still needs a lot of improvement, but many of the Costa Rican Spanish speakers who I interacted with, greatly increased my confidence in my ability to communicate with people effectively in Spanish. Now I’m ready to jump back into spending time with my Mexican neighbors, watching more videos in Spanish, and continuing to daily devour the Spanish Bible (I’m almost through the New Testament in Spanish for the second time in 10 months).

Here’s a picture from Intercultural Spanish School in Heredia, Costa Rica. I’m chatting with my classmate Eric from Germany and my classmate Scott, a doctor from New York City, is in the background.