Spanish with Maricarmen:  why we're planning to spend three weeks in Pitres

Amazingly, for a town of 500 people, Pitres boasts two language schools.  We are going to the Intercam School of Languages run by Maricarmen:

http://www.intercam-alpujarra.com/imagenes/MCarmen01.jpg

Maricarmen has been giving private lessons to Michele and I.  She brings so much experience, patience and wit to her lessons, that we decided to extend our time in Pitres to three weeks.

For me the most exciting part of this course has been discovering Compound Phrases.  You may have seen that book on Spanish verbs:













By my calculation that works out at 20,000 words to be memorized - not happening!

However there is an easier alternative, which is a bit like using chords to play the piano - not ideal, but a lot better than nothing, and that is using Compound Phrases.  With Compound Phrases you only need to know three words for each verb, i.e. Infinitive, Gerund and Participle.  1500 seems a lot more manageable than 20,000.  Of course this approach does unfortunately produce some slightly imperfect results:
"Ayer, he hablado con Pedro," translates as "Yesterday, I have spoken with Pedro" which is not something we would normally say, even if we knew a guy called Pedro.

Still I am excited, I think this approach is going to greatly assist our efforts to "Spanglish" our way around Latin American countries in the future.

Typically each day we get treated to Spanish proverbs and a "chiste" (joke).

My favorite chiste so far goes as follows:

Un elefante se sienta en una silla

Que hora es?

Es hora de comprar otra silla



An elephant sits down on a sofa

What time is it?

It's time to buy another sofa

............ok - not a gut buster - but I cannot help smiling.

One problem I face is finding reading material at my level.  Maricarmen has kindly lent me books such as "Beauty and the Beast" in Spanish.  Apart from the fact that it is not the most exciting material, I am finding even these books a bit too difficult.

After extensive search, I think I may have finally discovered a book at my intellectual level: