Beth and I have had a very busy October. Three weekends in a row, we had all-weekend plans. First we were out of town to visit my parents, then we had our scuba training. Well, this past weekend was the end of the busy-ness, and was a “Spanish Immersion Weekend.” That’s a program that Colorado Free University puts together to try to really improve people’s Spanish skills in a short amount of time. We had stuff Friday night, all day Saturday from about 8:30 AM to 9:00 PM, and then Sunday from 10:00 to 1:30. We celebrated finishing the whole thing by going out for dim sum Sunday afternoon. And boy was I glad to be speaking English the rest of the day.
I do have to say that the immersion approach sure speeds along comprehension. It had been 3 years since we took a Spanish class, and by the end of the weekend, I was starting to understand quite a bit that the instructors were saying without having to translate it to English in my head. I probably spoke 2x as much Spanish over the weekend as English.