Spanish Immersion

Earlier this year, some teachers at my school had a chance to go to a Rosetta Stone training in our district. I didn't sign up because they gave us very short notice and as should be pretty clear if you've been with me a bit, this past year was "special" to say the least. I didn't stick around for a lot of extra outside trainings because I was absolutely drained at the end of every day.

Turns out, however, that they got a free year subscription to Rosetta Stone. Had they told us we would get that for reviewing and trying the software, I would have gone to the training. I have since looked up the program and no way in Hades would I spend almost $600 on a program to learn a language. Not happening.

Well, it just so happens that The Husband and I are kid-free for the weekend (thanks mom and dad!) so we went out to dinner last night and then stopped in the strip-mall behind the restaurant to play with the kitties in the pet store and then made our way over to the bookstore that is right there. I love bookstores. The Husband never reads anything but non-fiction (ever) so he was busy looking at the nerdy science stuff and I was browsing around elsewhere. I passed the Language section and saw a box that looked just like Rosetta Stone but had a different name. So I picked it up and checked it out. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than R.S. and claims to do the same thing.

So I did what any self-respecting cheapskate would do. I came home and looked it up on Amazon! The reviews are pretty good for it and, as usual, its cheaper than if I had bought it at the store (which I couldn't have done anyway because they were out of the Spanish version). Now I know what's on my wish list for my next allowance. I don't need to be perfectly proficient with Spanish but I want to be able to communicate better with my Spanish-speaking parents at work. My position was ESL required, bilingual preferred because its SO expensive for them to hire translators for conferences and such (although fortunately seeing as how I'm going to be teaching 5th, most of the kiddos can translate for me if needed and it isn't as big of a deal).

It'll be interesting to see if the program really works well for me. And if it doesn't, I'll be out $37 rather than $550!