Day One Hundred Nineteen: Udemy

Udemy had a huge Black Friday sale, and I decided to purchase some classes for the betterment of myself and my kids. Clay has been doing a kid-friendly watercolor class, which he absolutely loves and which has been saving this art teacher's sanity the last couple of weeks. Today, I started a Spanish course, not for a kid or for school, but just for me, which felt like a treat. Based on these two classes, I could definitely see us utilizing Udemy for more classes in the future.

Day Ninety: italki

Today was my first time to experience italki, an online language learning site that connects potential language learners with native speakers of all kinds of languages for an immersion type experience. I sat in on Jeff's class but was encouraged to participate as I could. I was kind of a nervous wreck, since my speaking Spanish is even worse than my reading Spanish. But I got through it with the help and patience of both Jeff and the tutor, a very sweet Venezuelan woman, who now lives in Peru. It's pretty amazing how small the world is and how connected we all are. If my bravery holds out, I will open my own italki account and try to dive into Spanish a bit more.

Day Eighty-Nine: Translate an Article

Jeff has been taking online Spanish classes for a while and has been encouraging me to try it out as well. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been quite rebellious about doing this for mostly unknown reasons. But, I finally agreed to sit in on a class with Jeff tomorrow, so tonight I spent some time doing the homework, which was to translate an article about discrimination in schools in Spain towards immigrants and ethnic minorities that mirrors discrimination in other parts of daily life. I have not done any serious Spanish study in quite a long time, so it was a struggle to get through the article, and I was tired after I did it. But, I did it (with a little help from Google Translate). Talking in class tomorrow will be an entirely different matter, but at least I'm taking baby steps.

Un informe en espanol

Day Sixty-One: French

Half of the people in my household are actively studying Spanish, and another couple are learning the language passively. I have multiple reasons to join my family in the academic pursuit of this particular language, but honestly, I feel rebellious about it and unmotivated. I actually opened the Duolingo app on my phone today, but instead of resuming my Spanish lessons of long ago, I clicked on French, a language I have no experience with and have never attempted to learn in any formal way. I spent about 30 minutes working through the first two lessons. Who knew a simple act of rebellion would lead to a First?!

My Duolingo progress report