We've come a long way, baby!

The hubby and I have one week of Spanish under our belts and we've been thinking we're pretty dadgum smart. Basically we now know how to say our names, greet someone, conjugate a few irregular verbs as well as a whole bunch of regular verbs, say the Spanish alphabet, count to 100, and write in simple sentences. We've learned lots of vocabulary too, and like I've said before, every little bit of Spanish instruction we've previously had is coming in extremely handy.

On Friday our instructor gave us homework to complete over the weekend. The assignment included some relatively simple exercises where we had to choose the correct verb form in a group of sentences and then match up subjects and predicates to a different group of sentences. It wasn't long before I'd finished the exercises and found myself feeling quite confident in my work.

The other half of our homework wasn't as easy, but I was sure I could zip through it with no problem. We were given information about which to write a short paragraph. Wow! I couldn't believe how far we'd come in just a week's time! We must really be picking this stuff up quickly... or so I thought.

The information for my paragraph consisted of three key words ~ Pepe, taxista y Madrid (Joe, taxi driver, and Madrid). I really want to learn how to form the sentences myself, without the aid of the computer translator, but what I've rapidly discovered is that we've only touched on the whole verb conjugation thing. We've just learned the present tense form of verbs thus far, which means we still have to figure out the past and future tenses, as well as determine which verbs are regular and which are irregular. Okay, I'm not feeling as sure of myself now. In fact, my confidence level has taken a significant hit. We've come a long way, baby... but we've also got a long way to go!

Now back to the Spanish paragraph, my special seat and the hat I wear so well...