Hola!
Today´s my first day at IPED and it´s been really good so far, definitely meeting my expectations given the high praise I read about the school before. Classes are 9am-1pm every MWF and noon-4pm. I began the day with an excruciating hour of verbal test to assess my conversational skill level by the school´s founder, Zaida. Needless to say, I found it incredibly difficult to recall much of what I learned over 2 semesters of UCLA extension Spanish at the beginnning of this year. Although I still remember some of the vocabulary and grammar, it was difficult creating sentences and grasping listening comprehension. At the end, Zaida set the goal of me being able to ´fluently´converse in 3 basic tenses: present, past, and future on basic verbs by the time I leave end of next week. Hopefully, I´ll make enough progress by then... my first 2 hrs or so of lessons with my teacher, Tatiana was also painful... but I seem to be recalling a bit more as the lesson went on. So far, I am the only student with Tatiana which is great. There are only 4 other students in the whole school and they are all at different levels. It´s currently the low season so it´s perfect since I get 1-on-1 instruction.
After class, David, the owner (who´s American) took me around Heredia with a walking tour... visiting the town square, church, and indoor market. After the tour, I had my first salsa lesson - it was awesome... only 1 other student, Sam (18 yr old) so we each took turns with our teacher and had about 3 short lessons each for a total of 1 hr. Forgot the teacher´s name but she was very good - within the hour, I learned 4 different movements. Sam´s been here since the summer so he was way advanced.
Tomorrow is Tuesday so my Spanish lesson won´t start till noon. David recommended I go into San Jose, which is only about a 30 mins ride in from Heredia to visit the Theatro Nacional, Museo d´Oro, and Museo de Nacional before class. Will write more tomorrow.
For pictures from last couple of days:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shingwong/
For videos from last couple of days:
http://youtube.com/profile?user=shingwong
