Learning Spanish

[corny]

I'm now on level 2 in the Rosetta Stone discs. I am very satisfied with them.
What is hard for me is to find someone to speak Spanish with on a daily basis.

We do not have a high hispanic population where I live. I am trying to learn Spanish because I like to go scuba diving in the Carribean and Mexico.

Being that I lacked having someone to practice with I went on a site called www.Meetup.com. This site will let you find a group of people for just about any interest. I typed in "Spanish Group" and found a group near me that practices Spanish. I went to a meeting tonight as a matter of fact. Nice group of adults from every walk of life . All trying to learn English for one reason or the other. Tonight we got together at a resturarant named Panera. There was about 10 of us. We took turns reading a bilingual childrens book-"Rrizos de Oro y los tres osos"
. We laughed our asses off trying to guess how you would say this firmilar story in Spanish.

But like anything else in life. The more time you put into it the better you get. Que te vaya bein ! (leaned that tonight)

There used to be spanish chat rooms on yahoo with voice chat..... that might be worth looking into to.

[acmanko]

I took a job in Panama and learned quite a bit of Spanish, but once they learned I soke english, they only wanted to speak english

[corny]

I feel an obligation to say this, so please don't take offense at it:
Downloading copyrighted material from bittorent is illegal.

But as far as spanish goes, my mom was a high-school spanish teacher. It's pretty easy to learn, and my siblings and I grew up knowing a few words here and there.

Probably my two most vivid memories of spanish concern a friend that just found out "moco" means "booger". He said it about fifty times in the following hour.

The second memory is about a 4-H spanish program in which we were rewarded in our knowledge of spanish with burrito toppings. A kid ("Louie") knew a WHOLE lot of spanish words, and, let me tell you, he nearly ate the entire BOWL of "frijoles".

Im not offended...... I didnt think about putting up a disclaimer that downloading pimsleur or rosetta stone from bittorrent was illegal...... I mean...I fiqured everyone would know that anyway.

I for one dont have a problem downloading those materials myself.... I dont distribute them...and while I know its still technically wrong for me to download those materials.....I still do it.

To each his own...I guess....

[catcher]

I am looking forward to learning Spanish as soon as I get some time to commit to it. I'll probably use Rosetta Stone as the basis for learning, but my understanding is that one needs to compliment RS with a program that teaches grammar. I know there are online communities where people learning languages chat with each other to hone their skills, which is great if you are not around Spanish speakers on a regular basis. I can't remember the sites, but they are out there.