User:FlorrieDimond
Have you ever thought on using space, and not time to learn new language? I spend 8 months in Spain and didn't want to miss good life (long Spanish dinners with sobremesas, tennis matches in the beautiful and hidden tennis court where no one was coming to play, except my roommate Antony and me). I decided to do an experiment and learn Spanish faster then it was programmed.youtube.com I quit my classes with personal teacher and get down to do the work. I was keeping this idea in my mind for some time and decided to try it. I took the post-its and glued them on the objects around the house, so every object was named in Spanish (e.g.youtube.com on the window it was glued: Ventana).
So every time when i was opening the window, i could see it’s Spanish translation .I only glued objects and materials which i use the most in my daily life. After less than 5 days, without using special effort, just doing my daily routine, i remembered almost all 80 Spanish words (only could not remember ones which were glued on the places where i did’t spent too much time). I set with roommate who was testing me, and answered correctly 90% of the words. It was brilliant feeling, i was getting inside new language without realizing it. I did not stopped there. There are theories that person can be fluent in foreign language with the 1200 most frequently used words. 80 ones which were already glued (changed place of some to the more visible place).
So now I had around 500 words glued all over. And the result was? After only 10 days, i was able to construct my first sentences, and repeat ones which are already glued.youtube.com For example, if i was having a shower there were stickers with the word: "shower", then i added sentences: "I am taking a shower", "Is there shower gel in the toilet? ". I used sentences that I usually spoke at my house with family and friends. So every time when i went to take a shower, I was reading what is written in front of my nose. Pretty simple and effective. I just decided to memorize words which are glued in a places which I was seeing during the typical day.
In the 2,5 months i spoke Spanish "fluently fast" with limited vocabulary and often grammatically incorrect. But I was much more progressive than any university student who started with Spanish from zero in a such a short time. Later on, I don’t even remember how I learnt the rest of it to be super fluent because everything was easier. So did anyone tried my method? I have tested this method on the friends, then on small group of people, and got incredible results. I moved to Colares, Sintra near Lisbon in Portugal, rented a house near the coast and started with building this language course which will help people to learn easily new language. It took me around 3 months to simplify it enough that it fits into 6 sections, choosing right words and sentences, using grammatical minimum and testing everything on a friends who wanted to learn Spanish.
It was harder than i thought to put everything together. I finished the v.01 of the course with included 1300 the most frequently used words which provides fantastic and simple approach, material and instructions on how to be "basic fluent" in 40 days. Who wants to master it, can continue with own learning, but who wants to travel, have basic communication as James Bond in his short visits to South America, this is perfect thing. Course will suggests words and sentences which you can glue in your house with included grammar minimum. Every person will need at total 5 hours to prepare house (to glue everything where each five days different lesson should be glued using stickers) and just do daily rituals and observe around. Our course is now in Beta version. We want to provide learning languages for everyone for very low price (whole course will be cheaper than one private lesson). At the moment we are designing one boarding-pass [https://spanish55.com/blog/medical-spanish-for-physician-assistants online medical spanish] kit which you can carry on your trips. It will be nicely designed paper which you can fold in your passport. This boarding pass will help you to combine more than 800 combinations (thoughts, expressions, sentences) and it will help you to express any idea in Spanish.
There were various chefs stations where you could get fresh grilled fish, meats, or pasta. The spaghetthi was actually quite good i must say. It was a little short on the spice in most cases, but there were bottles of various sauces that you could use anyhow.youtube.com Strangely enough fresh greens seemed to be in short supply I guess the cubans don't like their lettuce as much as I do. Then after dinner we enjoyed nice entertainment by the water or in the hotel lounge. Remember to have long sleeves or bug repellent though because the mosquitoes can be agressive. Here is a video of some of the musical entertainment we enjoyed.
The energy of the Cubans dancers, musicians and entertainers was very impressive to me. The musicians played their pianos, violins and guitars with a true passion for the music. The dancers went on the scene with explosive energy bounding around the stage. One night there was even a magic show and the participants performed with the same zeal as the dancers. In the lounge the violin players were obviously very absorbed with playing professional quality music.youtube.com The only rude people i met on this trip were some other Canadians and that was a little sad. Most Canadians were friendly and talkative and I had a few interesting conversations that started during the nightly entertainment near the marina. Quite a few people had stories to tell from their lives.
One 19 year old girl called Andrea told me some information from the Sammy Yatim saga that is going on in our news. According to her Sammy Yatim was her best friend and had been kicked out by his father the night he died. She also told me that she had seen video where he had clearly dropped the knife before he was shot. That changed my mind about whether there was any justification to what the officer had done.youtube.com This girl also shared with me that she came from a family where cancer was common and that she had already had cancer at her young age. Fortunately it had been caught and treated in time. Another night there was a round table conversation with a mixed group of travellers.
Life Coach Carol and her 20 yr old son Adrian were on a vacation, and then there were a couple of married 30 something greek women. Pat was one of those greek women and she was burdened by the accidental death of her mentally disturbed brother years before. Despite all the obviously artificial beauty work she had done like pearly whitened teeth and skin cleared of any flaws by lasers, this burden cast an ugly shadow on her. Most Cubans seem to really appreciate children as you can see in this photo of the start of our cab tour. Taking a cab tour is also a really great way to see outside of the rather artificial area around the hotel complex. See a little more of the regular Cuban life and talk to the driver about how people live.
During the cab journey I learned for example that most Cubans don't have internet access even though supposedly it's available according the driver. There is something a little strange about driving through towns that don't have the usual capitalist level of storefronts. At times I commented about how it seemed that much of the land didn't seem to bet getting used by the highway. If it had been in another country I'm sure someone would have been trying an organic farm or something there. But our driver would just say that people don't like the hard of the country. What he really meant was that people need the motivation of money and personal success to go and innovate as the Israelis have learnt to farm in their desert.
Instead of organic farms here there were thin horses and the odd herd of goats in that empty land. The route goes through some interesting highlands where once upon a time revolutionaries hid from the government. 145kms later and through Cubas only underwater tunnel we were driving along Havana's Miami like waterfront. I was glad to have my GoPro along to take some video of the interesting architecture. Our driver gave us informative commentary throughout also. Then the first stop on our tour was the Jose Marti Memorial in Revolution Square. My sister's husband announced that this great parking lot like area was where Castro gave his famous 8 hour speech after the revolution. The main thing quickly became finding a washroom for the kids though.
My niece really needed to go and they wouldn't let us use the washroom at the government library. So we had to hurry up to the Jose Marti memorial before we caused an international incident by letting a child pee on Revolution Square. The Jose Marti Memorial is a pretty impressive building actually and it houses a museum of the revolution inside which cost 3 Cubans to enter. Must have cost a lot of money to build this towering structure. For some reason only one of us was allowed to use the washroom at a time.youtube.com While i was waiting i read some pretty inspiring revolutionary sayings from a pamphlet like "It's a sin to not do what you are capable of doing". There were quite a few other good ones but i forget what most were.
The Cuban people hold their revolutionaries in very high esteem. Next stop was the Cigar Factory outlet store. I wasn't too keen on this but I'm sure the driver gets a little kickback from this because it was pretty clear he would not be dissuaded from taking us there. Along the way we got to see some of the nice old houses of Havana which have now largely been turned into Museums. The driver told us that in times before the revolution the city had become a sort of Las Vegas of vice and corruption. Interesting to imagine how different it must have been in Havana in the days that the gangsters had moved in to control a lot of things here. The sold construction of these old stone houses is impressive too.
