Tuesday 22 March 2016

Spanish lessons in Mexico City

So on my second week in Mexico, I decided to sign up for Spanish language lessons. This was a 3 week course and I had decided to do it in Mexico City itself with the wish that I would reap the benefits for the rest of my journey through Mexico as well as the rest of Latin American.

I joined the University of Lasalle as the timing was right. It started right as I was returning from my short trip to Guanajuato, and it was only 3 weeks long. The other course I had shortlisted was 6 weeks long with UNAM, the local university. All in for the course with Lasalle, I paid 5200MXN, approximately 130sgd. This included 15 hrs of classes weekly from Monday to Friday in the morning and an additional hour of group conversation on Wednesday afternoons. I have to admit learning spanish has not been quite as easy as I'd anticipated. The grammer is totally different from english which is a pain when you think in english and try to translate directly by simply replacing the words into español. Thats before we even get into the aspect of masculine and feminine terms and the multiple conjugations.

Prior to starting, I was thinking it would be smooth sailing and I would spend half a day in class and the other half exploring the city of México. Lets just say that in the past 3 weeks, between class and homework, going to the supermarket to get groceries I pretty much the most exploring I've done. I keep forgetting words ive learnt and on multiple occasions in the same day, I may have checked a words definition upwards of twenty times only to forget it minutes if not seconds later. I did manage to go for some meetups though. Especially friday nights where I'd join a local language exchange at a cafe in Condesa, one of the districts in Cuidad de México.

Well now that the course is over, I still struggle with Spanish. My ear isnt tha great and I generally can't catch what is being said. I can ask questions,  but even though I may know the words in the reply, I generally can't catch them all! Most likely in a few more stops,  I am going to have to sign up for another course in spanish.