Guest Blogger: Kay, Rocket Spanish 6 Day Course
It’s that time of year when, along with the coffee and toast, my green, white and red copy of Easy Spanish & English Dictionary makes its appearance on the breakfast table.
“Hay pan tostado y mermelada,” I pronounce in what I hope is best Castilian. “La tostadora no funciona,” my husband replies conversationally, his finger and one eye on page 242, knowing that according to my rules, it doesn’t have to be true, it just has to be in Spanish.
This early morning crash course seems like a fine idea. Sadly, a proper study effort just isn’t going to happen. El jefe siempre está ocupado… and who has time for learning anything in these last few hectic weeks before we shut up shop for the Christmas holiday? But we both agree that arriving in Spain with a few useful phrases that trip lightly off the tongue makes the transition into holiday mode a whole lot easier and more fun.
The first thing to get right is the instructions to the taxi driver. Last year, in an effort to ease the traffic flow, the local authority introduced direccion unica to the streets around our favorite pueblo on the Costa del Sol.
We knew our way on foot, but for the taxi, the change meant a complicated circumnavigation of the entire village. Just giving the street address to the taxi driver didn’t cut it; I had to be able to tell him which narrow street he needed to turn into, and when.
For us, it’s nearly a 24-hour plane trip to get to Malaga, and jet-lagged and crotchety, I was tongue-tied when I had to conjure up the Spanish for “Go right at the stop, and then continue to the next intersection.”
We made it. But that’s how the pre-holiday desayuno-en-Espanol idea came about.
So now it’s “La dirección que buscamos está al norte de la ciudad”- quick gulp of coffee –”y la casa está a la derecha”.
¡Buen provecho!
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