Tracy Kornet's Blog

I turn the corner in downtown Valencia and run into two classmates. The city's clean, empty streets feel like a Hollywood movie lot...or maybe Disney World..when you run into the same people at dinner with whom you waited in line at Space Mountain. Yet people live and work here. With their families. And they have for generations. What an incredible day! Class whizzes by, as usual. I never check the time. 5 hours of fun, lively, practical instruction. Today the words seem to be soaking in. Everything sounds familiar. I realize I'm catching on to vocabulary and verbs with much less effort. I still struggle to form sentences, but I am not needing to write down every tiny detail. Here's a sentence to razzle dazzle you: Cerca de mi calle, hay parques, una fuente, y un salon de manicura. (Near my street there are parks, a foundation, and a nail salon.) Hold onto your hats. Here's another: A mis hijos les gusta ire a la Iglesia. (My kids like to go to churc...

Jet lag just hit me. It's almost midnight. I'm forcing myself to write this post before the day slips by. I had intended to spend a least an hour studying verb conjugations from this morning's class (mirar=to eat, hablar=to speak, soy & estar=to be, creer=to think, tener=to have, vivir=to live). But after class I decided to rent a bike and explore Valencia. I was clearly feeling overconfident in my navigation skills, because I took off for the sea and got lost for at least an hour out of town. I mean really, really lost. I seriously wondered if I would ever find the bike store and my poor friend Tricia who was sitting there waiting for me. I am now keenly aware of how much Spanish I don't know and that I must study how to ask for directions tomorrow. ------------ Class starts at 9am. It is clear 22-year-old Luis got some sleep. He is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and conjugating the verb "comer" (to eat) like a wild man. He and 19-year-old ...

Don Quijote School, Valencia, Spain My first day of school is already so much fun! I've been placed with two college boys on "gap years" from Britain and Switzerland, neither of whom speaks Spanish. So we're starting from scratch together. Hilarious! This school is stunning. Looks and feels like a 5-star hotel. Don Quijote has schools all over Spain and Mexico. And the whole week of instruction (5 days, 5 hours/day) costs 285 euro ($334 US). I think that's a deal, especially considering a semester of this in college would have cost at least $15K! Ooops, it's 9am. Off to class! --------------- Okay, this is so fun! First, let me remind you, I am starting with absolutely no basic knowledge of Spanish. Zip. Nada. Our 5-hour sessions are broken down into 3 segments, each with a different teacher. They are not to speak any English at all, but every now and then they slip in an English phrase to explain tricky concepts. We do a combination o...

I'm about to board a plane to Spain for 5 days of Spanish Immersion school. I've never had a day of Spanish class in my life. I took French in high school and college. I tried a Spanish lingo app for a few weeks to help me prepare for this trip and can barely remember the word for apple. I wonder if I'm even capable of learning a new language at this age? My short-term memory is decent from memorizing scripts at work, but long-term it's the pits. Just ask my high school friends whom I count on regularly to remind me of crazy stories I've forgotten. So I'm meeting one of them in Valencia, Spain to give my aging brain a chance. Studying abroad in France is something I was registered to do in college...twice. Last-minute job opportunities got in the way. So in the spirit of my "no regrets" philosophy, I'm giving this much more useful language a try, in a time window my news job will allow. I hope you'll follow this blog--and ...