So here we go!

"It's always best to start at the beginning..." -Glinda, The Good Witch of the North

I think the best thing about this whole blogging experience so far is that it has provided me with lots of wonderful suggestions from friends. I now know that I can attend conversational classes at the library, join a meetup group, or watch TV (including cartoons) using my cable's on-demand feature. Viva la Espanol!

Now I just have to figure out how this is all going to fit together.

I did set up my account with Mango Languages last week, and Baseball Boy and I sat down to our first lesson. There are three "courses" for those wanting to learn Spanish: Basic, Complete 1.0 (intermediate) and Complete 2.0 (advanced). Even though BB and I have a few fundamentals, we began right at the beginning with Basic, Lesson One. It was nothing we hadn't seen before, just greetings. I was more interested in the instructional delivery, which I thought was just what I/we needed -repetitive, with visuals, phonetic pronunciation and opportunities to rewind if necessary. The program even tracks how much time you spend on the lessons--17 minutes so far, baby! Woo hoo!

My short term goal is for BB and I to get into the habit of completing a lesson every evening (more or less). Once we finish the Basic course, we will then assess how brave we are and perhaps venture out to one of the conversation classes. That's the plan for now. Maybe some cartoons thrown in for good measure.

In other news...Little Guy, ever the observant one, must be catching on to what we are doing. As we were taking a little siesta this afternoon, out of the clear blue sky he asks me, "Mommy, how do you say 'no' in Spanish?". What followed was a rather hilarious exchange reminiscent of Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" with me telling him "no" was no in Spanish and him getting more and more irritated that my answer was "no" when he kept asking over and over.

Maybe you just had to be there.