José y Claudia Trabajamos

Claudia y José

My IU Southeast colleagues Ray and Kyle  advised me to study español at a language school.

There are many schools in Quito but that's two hours total of riding the bus for each session.

My officemate, Fausto, introduced me to Claudia una profesora de español de la universidad de San Francisco and now she and I are meeting twice a week for 1 hour of one-on-one conversación.

Claudia's spouse teaches math at a high school in Quito - sounds familiar, huh?  She once taught high school Spanish in Minnesota.

We've met twice, and I get to about 45 minutes in the session and my brain wants to shut down.  Claudia says: No hables inglés!  So I don't.  It's tough.  At times the words come out reasonably well, but others it's like my head is hitting a brick wall.  Sometimes you'll be half way through a sentence and get stopped dead.  Then you circle around what you were trying to say and come in from a different angle and wonder, why didn't I do that in the first place.