Spanish

"Spanish is coming along really well. I feel really good about it. We practice all day long and I feel like I'm slowly getting better everyday. I think it will be a lot different in Chile though. We practice teaching a lot, always in Spanish. About a third of our time is actually learning Spanish grammer and the rest of the time is learning and practicing how to teach. We work straight from Preach my Gospel. There is hardly any memorizing and there is a definite focus on teaching to what the investigator needs. We spend most of our time sampling different situations and planning what we think each person would need in each situation. While I'm feeling confident in my Spanish when talking to other novice Spanish speakers, I'm really nervous to talk to native Chileans. I hear they speak a mile a minute. But I have noticed a side effect...as I'm sure you've noticed, my English spelling and grammer have gone sufficently down hill. It gets harder everyday to switch back an forth between the two languages."