Learning Spanish in 7 days: a bet with myself

During my lunch break I updated my facebook status as such: "I need to learn Spanish in a week. Any ideas?". I had attempted to follow the lead of some MP3-formatted lessons last summer but knew I needed something more intense and interactive. So I posted on my profile hoping for some (dirt-cheap) miracle workshop. After all, I had gone to an ulpan during my second year in NY and was pretty pleased with the results (especially at $5 an hour). The following year was more challenging when it came to those Mandarin classes in Chinatown... Weekly was definitely not going to be enough this time. I needed something more "immersive"...

Some friends on facebook were pretty reactive to my request for ideas... 

start working at the bar at sushi samba 7 .. mas vasos por favor!!

A miracle? (jk). Try Rosetta Stone and watching a lot of Spanish tv to immerse yourself.

Try eating tapas and drinking bad red wine (or limed wine) ;)

... which got me even more motivated and compelled me to check Craigslist for more options.

Quickly I stumbled onto a couple of ads posted by female tutors who seemed to know what they were doing and I emailed them right away. Luckily, due to the snow, one of them had some availability this very same afternoon. With my boots penetrating centimeters of beautiful snow and a running nose, I rushed to that Starbucks in midtown where we had convened to meet up for this first and free one-on-one lesson. To my surprise, I was provided with some verb/adj/nouns tables, a pen and a pencil to do my homework with - which I thought was very sweet and smart.

Since I am not the only one curious to see how successful this endeavor will be, I decided to share highlights of this experiment. In the meantime, I will let you meditate on this selection of friendly comments:

change facebook to spanish

which I did right away ;)

Have meals with Spanish speaking friends each day and ask them to speak nothing but Spanish. If you have a basic understanding, then this might help.

One week? Well well well just don't learn puerto rico spanish is the worst!

boricua! ;)

???

 passe donc une semaine à Miami....

which translates into: "spend a week in Miami" and to which I responded: "Was already in Miami in Feb... online dating conference:http://bit.ly/iDateMiami and it didn't work :)"

¡Sugiero que usted emplea a un traductor, mi estimado!

Matrix !

babel fish

Telenovelas.. my favorites are Amor Real and Mujeres Asesinas 2

latin rock is great is you want to learn Spanish.
Una Via is a good local band ...
La Ley is a very popular band ..
and their lyrics are printed and you an follow and sing along.

This concludes our Day 1... Good night! S@