WEEK ONE 

This week was crucial for setting up the base of the rest of my project. I started this week off by looking into Rosetta Stone. I decided on the plan that was best for me, which ended up being a three month subscription for $15.99 per month. Glo, my outside mentor, ended up coming over for a little while and we talked in both English and Spanish about her upcoming wedding. Simultaneously, I started Rosetta stone modules. Unfortunately I had selected an intermediate level focusing on travel vocabulary and activities. After finishing the first couple of lessons, I realized that this level was not a good fit for me. I regret wasting so much time on the levels that were clearly too easy for me, but I am glad that I have since switched to the most advanced level that this program has to offer. Here I’ve just finished the first module and I switched from travel vocabulary to family because I believe this would help me more with general conversations. In this module I have worked with the past perfect, imperfect, future and the accompanying adverbs with different conjugations. Rosetta Stone is unique because instead of writing or regurgitating vocabulary, everything is matched with pictures and speaking and spoken instruction. Simultaneously, I have also started my expo on latin music. I began a spotify playlist and the week I’ve focused on an artist I have grown to really enjoy, Bad Bunny. Though this playlist is now 18 songs and not all of them are Bad Bunny I have found that my favorite album is "Un Verano Sin Ti".  I also had the privilege to meet with Ms Buchanan and we have already discussed my project and set up our meeting for the next check-in. 

WEEK THREE

This week has been my favorite so far because I weaned off a little of Rosetta Stone and instead really focused on cultural aspects and experiences. I started off with some basic lessons of Rossetta and in these I practiced a lot with the imperfect tenses, which are continuous or on going past actions and events, and some new vocabulary. For example I learned the different stages of school in Latin American countries. They are la escuela secundaria, la universidad university, y la escuela primaria. Each daily lesson on Rosetta Stone is getting harder and for the first time I had to look up some of the vocabulary they were using in their questions. Each lesson has begun to take me longer to complete.  Here are some clips of other types of activities I have been doing. I also watched another auxiliary video on restaurant manners. I’ve also been listening to my playlist all day, every opportunity that I get for the past week. I listen on my drive to and from school, while I’m studying, working out, or in the shower. I added a couple more Bad Bunny songs and was determined to memorize a couple of them because I got the incredible opportunity to go and see Bad Bunny at the Moody Center. 

It was a three hour concert completely in Spanish. All of his songs were completely in Spanish as well as every time he would address the audience. Here is a video from the concert. I was a little disappointed in my progress because I couldn’t understand everything he was saying to his audience. Nevertheless, it was still one of the most incredible concerts I have ever attended. His stage work and production value were insane and his ability to tell a story with his dancing, costumes, and lyrics were very beautiful. 

In terms of conversation, Glo and I called twice but didn’t end up meeting in person this week unfortunately. I have begun to supplement our conversations with other Spanish speaking students at St Stephen’s. For example, Tomas and I ended up discussing his time living in Romania and how everyone there spoke some Spanish because they all watched telenovelas. Our conversation then moved to discussing his favorite telenovelas or one he could recommend to me. He said recently that he’s been watching La Casa De Los Flores (the House of Flowers). I have really gotten into it this week and have finished eleven episodes over the course of this week. Here is a link to the official review page of the show from Rotten Tomatoes. I am doing my best to keep the subtitles off and sometimes when the show becomes really emotional or at a pinnacle plot point the actors begin to speak really fast and I’ve had to turn back on the subtitles. I think out of everything I have done thus far, watching the show has been the most helpful because I actually ended up having a dream partially in Spanish. One of the characters has a really unique voice and face and she appeared in the first part of my dream speaking to me in Spanish. I feel that this demonstrates the progress I’ve been making. 

WEEK FOUR

I finished La Casa De Los Flores this week. The full show was about 13 episodes with 30-40 minutes per episode and here is a summary, with no big spoilers for anyone who reads this and wants to watch the show. It followed a family drama surrounding the long standing royalty of the De La Mora family. Here is a character list. At the beginning of the show, the family’s repudiation is spotless, a mother, Virginia, and father, Ernesto, who love each other, a son who is engaged, Julián, a daughter who has gone away to be an architect in New York, Elena, and a second daughter, Paulina who is said to be the one to inherit the flower shop and has a lovely partner named Bruno. However in the pilot episode, set for a grand party for Ernesto’s birthday,  things quickly begin to crumble for this family. Elena comes and is engaged to a black man, which upsets her traditionalist, frankly quite racist mother and relatives as she won’t let him sit for the family portrait. Bruno gets very obviously drunk. Julian is hooking up with the family's much older financial assistant Diego Olvera who is a man. Julian is not only cheating on his finances but he is revealed to be gay, or later specified as bi to his mother’s dismay. All this is set up in the first episode which ends with a woman, the narrator for the rest of the show named Roberta, who hangs herself inside the flower shop during the birthday party. She is quickly recognized by Paulina as her dad’s mistress and from there the drama is just beginning. 

This week I also finished the next module of lessons as I had a lot of time for them, which vocabulary wisely focused on staying in a hotel and the grammar and formalities you would use for this type of activity. I also met with Glo twice this week in person. Once for breakfast, where we were finally able to talk about her life before she met my dad. She’s worked a lot of strange jobs, at Disneyland, and as a stagehand to a large theater in Costa Rica. She worked for a couple years for a family in Uruguay as a nanny and assistant. That’s when I first met her. She used to have a gambling and drinking addiction and she’s very good at Black Jack, which at our next meeting for dinner I played her poker while talking in Spanish and lost every time. At dinner we were able to talk a little bit more about Costa Rica and their current events. Though the president isn’t her favorite right now, and she thinks that the government and economy are very down in the dumps, she told me using more slang and I learned a lot of new words while she described her opinions on the current state of the nation. I then followed up by reading this article, which highlights the social change that the new president has tried to make with the economy, but how that has come at the price of funding social welfare programs. Here is also a link to his most recent speech which I listened to but unfortunately did not understand a lot of.