Spanish lessons, early starts

Folks,

This is the week that I began my Spanish lessons, we said good-bye to Sophia, and Star Wars comes to Heredia.

Spanish Classes
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I eventually met with Marcello, the director of the Spanish school, and enrolled for classes which ran from Tuesday to Friday. We had a brief chat in Spanish, and he put me onto book 2, as he felt I was above basic beginners. I was in a class with 3 others. Laura from Georgia, USA, and Philippe and Caroline from Quebec in Canada. I’m so lucky as they’re paying $250 a week for tuition. Classes run from 8.30am to 12.30pm and are conducted totally in Spanish. Talking in the language for 4 hours a day makes a real difference and I can feel it already. However, I was to go onto book 3 today (Monday), but there isn’t a book 3 class this week, so I’m not back for class again until Monday.

Adios Sophia
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You may remember me mentioning Sophia, the English girl we met with Shane. Well, we bumped into her in Más X Menos (the supermarket) on Monday. She was amazed how things had gone for us on the job front, and in having a furnished apartment, with phone (“Can it receive international calls???”) and internet connection. “Oh my God, you guys are just so jammy!!”

We were so raw when we met her before, and we are probably inclined to forget how much we’ve done in those few weeks.

The Irish Quarter
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Sophia rang us again on Monday night, to say she was having a few drinks Tuesday before returning permanently to the UK on Wednesday. We joined them in the local bar, El Bulevar, and met up again with the Universidad Interamericana crowd that works with Shane and her. We hadn’t seen Shane in ages, and discovered that our apartment is literally 50m from his. You can actually see his building from our balcony. We were saying that this end of Heredia is fast becoming the Irish Quarter. Or Little Kilburn as Jack called it.

La Guerra de las Galaxias
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Thursday saw the opening of La Guerra de las Galaxias – Episidio III: La Venganza de los Sith. Believe it or not, Jack had never seen any Star Wars films, and didn’t know the story. So we got out Episodes I and II on DVD in advance. I had to shield him from all reviews so he wouldn’t know who became Darth Vadar. We went to see Revenge of the Sith on Friday, and got out Episodes IV, V and VI over the weekend. He must be one of the very few people to have seen the films in the correct sequence, and without knowing the plot twists!

Useful technology – Part II
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Following my mail last week, my friend Paul Lloyd living in London mailed back and told us about Skype. Skype is a telephony product you can download for free. You can phone, for free, from your PC to anyone with Skype on their PC. However, you can also break out to a normal phone if you pay for it. It doesn’t matter where you are phoning from; it’s the destination country that determines the cost. For Ireland, the cost is just 1.7 euro cent per minute for landline, and 19c per minute for mobiles. We had been using telephone cards at 50c per minute. It’s amazing. It means we can now make long calls. Jack was on the phone for 1 hour 12 minutes last week for €1.23! It’s cheaper to call my mother in Ennis from here than it is from Dublin!
Anyway, I have to head off now to prepare my classes for this week. I can hear the rain on the roof so I know it’s lunchtime!

Hasta la proxima semana.