The Spanish Saga Continues

I made the big decision to switch Spanish schools and to do at least a few weeks of an intensive course—4 hours a day, 5 days a week.  Yesterday I showed up to start and had to take a diagnostic: 80 multiple choice questions plus an oral component.  The multiple choice got progressively harder.  In the beginning, I knew the answers and by the end of the middle, I began to answer by what sounded right, which I suppose is okay.  Then came the oral part.  Toni, the teacher who assessed me, started by asking me what I was doing in Barcelona. And off I went, chattering away.  After awhile he stopped me and asked some more questions.  After what seemed like a very short time, he stopped and gave me his assessment.   “Your comprehension and fluidity are up here,” he said, holding his hand up near eye level.  “Your grammar, down here,” he added, lowering his hand a foot or so.  I think this was a nice way of telling me that I speak like a four year old, but because I don’t realize it or don’t care too much what I sound like, I just keep the words coming.  Most people in my situation, I think, are too embarrassed by what they sound like to babble on.  Not me.  “This is a challenge,” Toni said, “because if we put you where your grammar is, you will be bored.  But if we put you where your speaking is, it will be too challenging.”  So I ended up in “Intermediate 3” whatever that means. 

Everyone in the school, except for the senior citizens class, is much younger than me, so I feel more middle-aged than I ever have.  My class has four people in it, including me.  Two Asian men, and a young Brazilian woman.  The Asian men have been studying for months and months.  They arrive with notebooks full of lists, index cards of vocabulary words, and know every single grammatical rule, but have a hard time stringing together a good sentence when they speak.  Meanwhile, I sound like I know what I’m talking about, even when I don’t, which is much of the time.

After my first session yesterday, I was beat.  I came home and napped.  I thought it was the Spanish that had done me in, until I spent the rest of the night honking and blowing and realized that the cold that had danced around me in Sicily had sunk its snotty claws into my head.  When I woke up today my head felt like a bowling ball.  So I stayed home from class, which means I’m already behind.  Pray for me.