Rosetta Stone

So, I was lucky and received a 1 year subscription to Level 3, Latin American Spanish from Rosetta Stone, courtesy of PC. I've been playing around with it for a couple of weeks now, and I hope to get through at least Level 2 before I leave (ideally the whole thing!). Hopefully this will put me on par with the others who are in my PC volunteer class. I've heard one couple is already planning a 2-month homestay in Mexico before March so that they can get a jump start on the language...

My experience with Rosetta Stone so far has been positive. I have tried a different online learning program, and there are some things I like more about Rosetta Stone (maybe due to all the hype):

- I've gone through 1.5 units in Level 1 (4 units total in Level 1). I have not seen a single word of English since everything is presented in pictures and Spanish. So, I am not as reliant on a Spanish-English dictionary.
- However, the trade-off is that there aren't any real grammar explanations. While the pictures are pretty good at explaining grammatical concepts (singular vs plural, first person vs third person, some verb conjugations), there are a couple of things that I am just not understanding. I wish the program would provide some type of explanation for these, since they advertise it as "the same as how you learned your first language"--but I'm pretty sure they taught us grammar in school.
- They go back and force you to periodically review modules. This has been good for reinforcing vocabulary and concepts.

The thing I am still unsure about is if Rosetta Stone will get me thinking fast enough to hold a conversation in Spanish. Some of the answers are just coming out of my mouth (yay!), but I had a hard time with the end-of-unit "test", which was more of a conversation. I am hoping / wondering if the higher level units start getting into more conversational practice, so that may help. PC has also given me access to www.scola.org, which streams TV and radio from other countries. This has been a great way to hear Spanish in real-time and try to absorb it at real speeds.

Learning From Experience

Saturday the 8th was the final exam for my Outdoor Emergency Care class that I've spent the last 12 weeks teaching. This is a class that I was in charge of, where I was very lucky and had a solid core of about 20 other instructors to assist me, so I did not have to actually teach every class. The support I had was amazing. We taught basic first aid for the local Ski Patrol, with class Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 6-10 PM both nights. It was a huge time commitment for the students, and I am proud of every single one who survived. Though I will admit severe frustration at times, trying to get students motivated to learn and practice, I have also personally learned a lot from this experience. I really wish I could stay on and teach it all over again, but next time do it better--I already have some ideas of things I would like to try differently. Hopefully after PC, I will have the opportunity to do so. Working with my Ski Patrol over the last year or so has been a blast, and I will really miss the organization and the people.

The experience of being an instructor and nominally in charge of everything was interesting. The teaching and facilitating skills that I have been working on have already proven useful at work, and I am sure will be great PC skills as well (plus dealing with frustration). From what I have heard, PC service is a great learning experience, maybe one of the most profound learning experiences of your life. I can't wait!

Now that my marathon of teaching is over, and my students happily graduated on to bigger and better things, I have time to focus on my move home. I have been extremely lucky in that I received my invite ~6 months before staging, as opposed to the (rumored) minimum of 6 weeks. I can't even imagine trying to sell all of my furniture, leave my job, move home, etc., in 6 weeks time; I am very impressed with the people who pull it off! But, the downside to starting early is that I am now living mostly furniture-less. I have been using Craigslist for the first time ever, and it's amazing how fast things can sell if priced right (i.e. low). Oddly enough, my bed was the first thing that sold. So, for the last couple of weeks, I have actually been sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag and using a camping Thermarest pad. I guess it will be good practice for PC!