parlez vous français?

Amazon delivered my latest project today - learning español. Clearly I made the wrong choice in languages when I was younger as covered in parisian air, but I was rebellious back then and wanted to be unique. It seemed as if everyone spoke Spanish in Texas, and traveling the world meant Europe in my small mind at the time. French seemed to be the obvious choice.

While there may be no do-overs in life, my philosophy is that it is never too late to either make amends or do something whether new or unfinished. Lela Burden graduated high school at the young age of 111. Studies have shown that rekindled lovers have 76% chance of staying together compared to 40% on average.

I have explored most of Europe and some of Asia, where in many countries, it has been relatively easy to navigate with English. Africa and South America are continents that I have only had the opportunity to visit once each. My goal when coming back to the States four years ago was to target Central and South America for holidays given the proximity, similar to my approach in Asia. However, that would have required me to learn Spanish, as it was clear that not many spoke English when I visited Argentina a few years ago. 

My attempt at Rosetta Stone was an abysmal failure. I started and stopped many times, never really getting the motivation. After further researching these programs, it seems as if it is sometimes difficult for adult brains to learn from immersion only, which is the Rosetta Stone approach. Something I've learned over the years is that my learning style consists of cramming and repetition with visual, auditory, verbal and writing comprehension balance. Rosetta Stone did not teach the grammar so short of learning the specific phrases, I struggled with putting together my own sentence structures. Fluenz seems to have addressed those aspects so I'm hopeful that it would be better suited for me.

My initial reaction was to book a holiday to South America six to nine months from now as incentive to complete this task. Rio de Janeiro during Carnavale has always been on my bucket list. Of course, it took a few seconds to realize that the timing was off, not to mention the language (although I have been told that Portuguese is not difficult to navigate with Spanish as a base). One day I'd like to read 100 Years of Solitude (Cien Años De Soledad) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in its native tongue. Baby steps...