Spanish Anyone?

One of the first questions people ask when they learn we plan on first visiting Ecuador for a month and then checking it out as a retirement destination is :" How is your Spanish?" Well, I have discovered that my Spanish is much better in my mind than it is in actual conversation. You see, I had two years of Spanish in high school and then another two years in college, but that was like 40 years ago!

So, last January Pam and I hired a private tutor to meet with us once a week to teach us Spanish. Wonderful guy who was a certified teacher of both English and Spanish. But, very little progress because we had no opportunity to practice it between sessions. I admired his patience, though.

So, I thought I'd buy Rosetta Stone per their advertisements. But, the cost was almost $600. So, I spotted a discounted Rosetta Stone package on the internet from China at a cost of only $100. Sounded too good to be true. It was guaranteed to be fully functional with a key code to unlock it. So, I purchased it, ignoring the little guy in my brain that said "don't do it..it is a scam....if it sounds too good to be true, it is!"

Well, you guessed it. It didn't work! It was impossible to get my money back! I still couldn't speak Spanish.

So, now it is about two weeks before we travel to Ecuador and we will go to Plan B: Learn the language through immersion in the culture. We understand that many of the people we will be interacting with in Quito and Cuenca are bilingual and are eager to practice their English. So, maybe we can trade. Spanish lessons and tutoring are also supposed to be very inexpensive there, so we might just join a class.

Will keep you posted, amigos.......