I am working on learning Spanish by employing a number of different methods. Some seem to help me more than others.

I was thinking about how a child learns language. They learn “mom”, “dad”, “cookie”, etc…and as time goes on they add verbs and conjunctions and before you know it they have simple sentences.

What this revelation did for me is made it clear to me that I need more nouns in my vocabulary.

I checked a book out of the library recently that is going to help me with that. It’s called Spanish Around the House by Jose Diaz and Maria Nadel. It was written to assist English speakers in communicating with their Spanish speaking employees…but it is great for me, too.

I also came across another excellent website for free language courses. I am downloading the lessons to my mp3 player and I can hardly wait to get started!

Here is the link: http://fsi-language-courses.com/Spanish.aspx

Here is a link to more podcasts: http://www.notesinspanish.com/

-Nancy

A few days ago Nancy wrote a post about reasons to move to Mexico, and I agree with them based on what we have observed on our trips down, and what we have read in our research. I would add climate to her list, and in fact this is one of my top reasons.

However, I have some concerns about things that may not be so great about living there for me:

1. Mexico is a very catholic country, I have read that over 90% of Mexicans identify themselves as catholics. I am not a fan of organized religion in general, and the catholic church in particular. I won’t say more as I risk sliding into a rant on this topic.

2. Mexico is a conservative country, and I have generally liberal social and political views.

3. I am fairly heavily tattooed. These are works that were carefully planned and executed over many hours by serious artists, and I am proud of them. While they can be covered when I wear long pants and shirts, I won’t dress like that very much in Mexico, so they will be visible. I wonder how that will go over down there. I have not seen many tattoo shops in Mexico, nor many people who are inked except tourists.

4. I like quiet, and that is in short supply in cities and towns in Mexico. Will this be a minor annoyance or a major headache?

I am not trying to be negative, just realistic. No situation is perfect, and I am 100% committed to doing this despite my concerns. I am interested in what our readers have to say about these things.

Hasta Luego,
Paul