First Day of School

 

I attended my first day of Spanish class today at ICPNA (Instituto Perunivano Norte Americano, believe it or not, they just pronounce it as ICPNA). I'd only been there when first registering and it was dead, but today it was packed with young kids attending various classes. I came rather close to walking into an English class by mistake, having misremembered the room number. I would have been quite the star there.

Instead I was the kid who can't speak any Spanish. Ok, so I wasn't the worst, but I'm pretty close. I'm actually a week behind as classes started last week, but I'd studied over the weekend and am mostly caught up. Of course the class is taught entirely in Spanish but it's at a reasonably comfortable pace.

It's been a long long time since I've been in a class and I kind of remember why I dropped out of school. Not being able to really guide your learning, focusing on parts you need more help on and vice versa is terrible! You are either feeling rushed and confused or bored. It's no fault of the teacher or class, just of the system. No, I don't really have any suggestions on fixing it. (interactive software?) Regardless, I'm learning from it, it's just frustrating that it's not more quickly.

To that end I've hired a private teacher to work with me a bit every afternoon as well, hopefully that will help in a more self guided manner that is more effective.

In other news I have interweb again! A technician arrived at 10:30 and promptly diagnosed my modem as dead. For some reason he doesn't carry spares though, so with a little help from Google Translator he related that I needed to exchange mine at the eMax office in San Isidro. Finding the office was fairly straighforward, but it took them forever to reprogram the modem.

Oh well, at least I'm no longer a thief. I've seperated my WiFi router and the WiMax router, so hopefully they won't interfere if that was indeed the problem.