Learning and commitment

I just finished my sixth spanish lesson. I am learning fast but I know I could be putting in a lot more effort. It is too easy for me to speak english with couchhosts and other travellers and that temptation is preventing me from learning as fast as I can.

I am currently able to express myself very well in the present tense, directions, shopping, introductions and telling people a little about myself I can do. I can understand maybe 50% of spoken spanish if it is slow and well enunciated, probably less than 10% if it is fast as in normal conversation between two native speakers.

I have recently been reading a Tony Robbins book with a lot of interesting mental techniques and strategies in. Tony places an emphasis on COMMITTING to something if you want to succeed in that area. You must prioritise your goals and make a decision to achieve them, then follow through with consistent commitment. In this case, my current goal with the highest priority is to become conversationally fluent in spanish. Up until now I have been putting in some effort but haven't been fully committed to this.

Today I made a decision to commit. I am attending a language speaking class this evening, I will spend my spare time reading spanish books and talking with people who can ONLY converse in spanish, this will force me to learn fast or be unable to express myself at all (this is called getting LEVERAGE on yourself). To this end, my next lot of couch hosts, starting this friday, will be spanish only speakers. My next blog post will be in spanish ONLY. This is holding myself accountable.

Enough of language. I stayed in a hostel last night for the first time because I screwed up a hosting situation and left my bag somewhere else so that was a bit of a mess. It's all sorted now though and I have another host until friday. Hostels are a mixed blessing, they are great for meeting people and being social but TERRIBLE for sleeping. I only slept four hours last night due to the noise, some retard was playing an electronic keyboard outside my room at 2am. Apparently porteños do not sleep.

Last night I went to a party called la bomba. This was INCREDIBLE. There were a group of tribal style drummers coordinated by a conductor using hand signals, and they had a guest singer, trumpet player, acapella/voicebox dude and a jazz keyboard player. It went on for about three hours, the atomosphere was amazing and I really felt like the rythym of the drums was grabbing something primitive inside of me, it was a crazy experience. I think I will go again if I am here next week.

I am going again to LIFE charity this afternoon. I already went twice with them to help teach the kids in las villas and it was... a really touching experience. The kids don't care that you don't speak the language very well, they take far more from your body language and voice tone. They all have their own distinct personalities and I really get a kick out of interacting with them. I am very inexperienced in dealing with children but I feel it may be something that we can discover inside ourselves naturally and I hope I can learn at least as much from them as they are learning from the charity school we provide. I feel like I'm discovering a side of myself I wasn't previously aware of and that's pretty cool.

On that note, I must head off there now! Laters...