Second Trimester of Language School

Our second trimester of Spanish classes was from January until the end of April with very few days off in between. It was a long 4 months where we really began applying everything we're learning. We had two hours of Language class in the morning, an hour break, and two hours of Grammar class after. In the beginning I just wasn't sure how we were going to be able to do it!

Our language classes pushed us and we were both making 30 minute presentations in Spanish in just a few weeks time. I think I would spend about 5 hours on my homework each time we had a presentation (and I had about 3 a week!). We had to talk about everything from our testimony, to favorite past-times, to holidays, differences in culture, childhood memories, our home church and former work, our future plans, people we identified with in the Bible, on and on. It was very hard, but the hard work paid off.

In Grammar class, here is what we covered in second trimester:
- past imperfect tense ("I spoke" many times/description)
-past perfect tense ("I spoke" one time in the past)
- future tense ("I will speak")
-conditional tense ("I would speak")
-PPC (perfecto compuesto) tense ("I have spoken" many times)
- future perfecto ("I will have spoken")
- plusc perfecto ("I had spoken" recently)
-conditional perfecto ("I would have spoken")
- commands ("Speak")

We also learned the differences in using "por and para"
-both mean "for" more or less
-there are certain cases to use each one...it just all depends

We learned the uses of participles and how to conjugate them in the infinitive, regular and irregular participio

And finally, we started the use of SUBJUNCTIVE. In our book, subjunctive is divided up into 15 rules and they are all taught separately with their own distinct differences. This can get really jumbled up in your mind. We really learned all the subjunctive tenses first and then third trimester we are learning all the rules specifically one by one.

At one point, Will had to stay home from school and write all the rules and tenses on our dry erase board in the kitchen and just review and review all day long. It was like we had hit our lid and nothing else was going in! The picture above is his creation from that day.

School is so difficult, but I constantly remind myself to be thankful for it. When I hear myself speaking Spanish, I almost can't believe it. I took a nap today and the entire thing was in Spanish. I remember waking up and telling Will some stuff in Spanish right away because I was used to saying it in my dream. So weird. I still get nervous all the time, but I am able to push through it. Talking to strangers is the worst, but sitting down with people one on one isn't bad at all. Costa Ricans are very nice and patient people and they appreciate your effort.

We're now almost halfway through with our third trimester! Yay! Not too much longer! Once I graduate I will be completely fluent in Spanish right? Hahaha.