"If the world is ending, yo armo la fiesta."

Hi all! I registered on the forum for "fluentin3months" for extra motivation to continue learning Spanish. I figured I should probably include any posts from there on this blog to keep you up to date with my progress, so here's the first:

Before I begin, let me first say that the title is quoted from lyrics of an English song whose Uruguay-born, US-raised writer also released a version in Spanish. So if "armo" sounds a bit iffy, don't blame me, I preferred not to alter the lyrics for consistency's sake. :) 

Now on to the meat of the quesadilla: 

¡Hola! My name is Emily and my goal is to be comfortable having a 5 minute conversation in Spanish with a native speaker by December 21, 2012. Originally I picked January 1, 2013, but considering that a decent number of tin-hatty types are convinced we won't be around by then, I decided that it'd be great to at least achieve bilingual fluency, even if I don't get to leave high school (Class of 2013, haha).  

A bit of my background learning Spanish: I received a letter in 7th grade inviting me to take Spanish the next year and I did just that. Even though we had plenty of speakers in the beginning who encouraged us to give it our all and reap the benefits of knowing a second language, I was at most, half-heartedly inspired. I continued learning Spanish in high school as part of the International Baccalaureate program. As much as I tried my hardest to really absorb the material, the high pressure atmosphere created by my other courses just wasn't the ideal learning environment. The loosely-enforced "¡No Inglés! rule in class proved fruitless once our oral presentations had been submitted. On May 17th of this year I tested out of Standard Level IB Spanish. My official obligation to the language was over.  

This summer, an abundance of free time and a previous interest led me to this website. Oh boy, was I inspired. Since then I've explored programs like busuu, Duo Lingo, and Anki. My game plan for the next month includes watching movies in Spanish without subtitles, listening to Spanish radio, improving my grammar and conjugation, and if I'm brave enough, venturing outdoors in the morning to speak with the yard workers. I live in Florida, but I won't have a good connection to the Hispanic community until school starts again in August. During the school year, as a member of Spanish National Honor Society, I'm hoping to take advantage of opportunities like Spanish tutoring and interpreting for parents at elementary school parent-teacher conferences.  

Though I usually have quite a problem with seeing things to the end, my motivation seems to be more than enough to carry me through this goal. After I get make it over the "hill" of conversational fluency in my first foreign language, I'm looking forward to beginning my journey towards being a polyglot very much. I've also recently started a blog which is likely to include comments on my progress. Feel free to check it out. :) Otherwise, I'm hoping to post here at least once a month and more often if appropriate.  

"Querer es poder." 

Thanks for reading and sorry for any redundancies!

Once again, I didn't get around to yesterday's post. But I have good reasons! Plus, I think a goal of 5 posts per week is adequate, especially when school starts.

Yesterday I furthered my Spanish studying through previously mentioned methods, plus the discovery of Duo Lingo, which is mostly great for solidifying common vocabulary. The biggest amount of practice occurred when I turned on a Spanish-dubbed movie on HBO, and I could understand plenty of it! I'll probably try to do this twice a week.

This was cut short (probably for better) as I was summoned back into society to play tennis and go swimming with my best friends. It was an afternoon of stupid jokes and lethargy: in other words, perfect. Then we stuffed ourselves full of chips, quesadillas, and churros. And that's the definition of a great evening.

Oops, skipped a day.
It's been 1 week since I started this. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
No really, that's kind of an accomplishment for me.

To follow up on my last post, I've been looking into different learning techniques and such which involved the website "fluentin3months.com" The name is misleading. It's not one of those really long pages with a Paypal link at the end asking you to buy some BS digital course. It's the blog of someone who's become fluent in many languages and discusses what he's learned about well... learning. It inspired me and made me aware of the ways I can improve language acquisition. If you've ever had any interest in becoming bilingual or multilingual, seriously, read through some of it.

Following that, I found (or possibly rediscovered, unless that's deja vu) busuu.com, which isn't the holy grail of language learning programs, but it sure is satisfying to see the little progress animations. The instant messaging system isn't half bad either, at least when the native speakers aren't completely conspicuous about hitting on you. Combined with "Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish" and some bonafide dedication, I think I can do this.

I suppose it's quite ironic that I'm finally putting a serious effort into learning Spanish a week before I receive the results from my IB Spanish test. Oh well. I'm sure the benefits of actually learning it will far outweigh a ticket into a slightly higher college class.

In other news, my friends are back in town and that's exciting.

It shouldn't be this close to July.

I want to be a polyglot. To be able to watch any movie without subtitles. To travel the world easily and have a desired skill for the CIA if I wished to join.

I've been "learning" Spanish since 8th grade and didn't feel like I progressed much until this year. It's not that I find it hard to understand the grammar and pronunciation, it's the process of continuing to practice adequately and retain the vocabulary that kills me. I wish I could have been raised speaking two languages so I could have hope that it was possible. Right now I feel stuck at the intermediate level while my mind gets distracted by the prospect of learning even more languages. I'd pause time and spend a year in Costa Rica if I could. Maybe I could study abroad to further my learning.
But I want to learn so many different languages too. I just need to stop and focus until I'm nearly fluent before I move onto anything new.
Again with the starting things but never following through.
I just want to concentrate.


Pretend I made a smooth transition.

I filled out an application today at a place I'd love to work for. Afterwards, I went into Home Depot and Lowes still wearing business casual attire which meant a skirt. In both stores I was immediately approached in exactly the same way by two male employees asking if I needed help. I didn't know whether to be flattered, creeped out, or frustrated by female stereotypes.

21 Jump Street was fun.

The very first few hours of today were spent rewatching Thor and staying up to see the scores from the ACT I took this month which elicited a "meh." Consequently that meant that the early middle hours of the day were spent in dreamland.

The day did happen to grow mediocrely productive as I embarked on a regular information quest across the internet with today's topics including speed reading, the psychology behind learning, and C++ programming. Only my computer's severe lack of memory space (due to my negligence to transfer photos to my external hard drive) impeded my progress in the latter subject. There's always tomorrow to download an IDE program.

Other than that, I noticed, especially today, the growing problem I have with finishing tasks. I fleeted from article to article to even tutorials and kept getting sidetracked by a link on the page or a sudden interest that needed to be satisfied. Oh how I love to begin things but oh how hard it is to follow through. What I find interesting though is that I act completely the opposite in my school and extra curricular activities. For most of my young life I've stuck with commitments like dance classes, certain clubs, and other organizations even if I despised them. Either that, or I felt an immense guilt when walking away prematurely. Intellectually however, I can't seem to stay on the same hobby or interest for more than a week, or in the case of browsing, 15 minutes.

There has to be some way to fix this but I'd probably get distracted halfway through the cure.

Today has been slow and Tropical Storm Debby (Downer) hasn't done anything to improve my motivation, so for tonight, that's all folks.