Neruda en espanol

A lucky find on Thanksgiving Day was a copy of Neruda's Selected Poems in Ina's room. Not sure when, where or why she bought it.

Never realized nor had it pointed out to me, that a facing-page bilingual edition of some poetry is a great way to learn a new language. (Maybe Ina picked up this edition of Neruda's poems when she was taking Spanish at STC (then STCC) that summer? Perhaps she was even inspired by that facing-page edition of Goethe's Faust that I read for a some UofC (HiPSS?) class, and then loaned her way since she was getting into German. That was in her room too, BTW, but I didn't reclaim it this time.)

Building some Spanish skills is a project I've been meaning to spend put some time and effort into. Thought about it while I was at Cornell--really should have taken a class while I was there, or at least drawn on Marcelo, Ricardo et al for some lessons.

In Ann Arbor, instead of Spanish, spent some time thinking about learning some Italian, hoping to take advantage of Simeone as an instructor--but we didn't get very far with that either. Simeone and I did attend the first class of an Ann Arbor community education Spanish course, down at Pioneer High, in June 2003, but (luckily) we didn't get our registrations in for the course, and so the instructor didn't even let us sit in for the 2nd half of the evening.

So then I made studying Spanish one of my New Year's plans last January--along with a few other endeavors I haven't fully followed through with: doing yoga on a regular basis, studying some Buddhism. In the past couple months I have done a bit more with the Spanish; motivated mostly by the fact that we're headed to South America in less than three weeks. I put in a subscription to Piensa en Espanol, have been carrying a copy of Living Language's Spanish book in my jacket. (Quick reviews: haven't used the two editions of Think Spanish that I've received all that much, but I'm not too impressed. My impression of the Living Language materials is consistent with what I thought of the Italian book & audio lessons--not great, but decent for getting a base of some phrases on the cheap. My strategy for aquriring the Living Language courses: checking the CDs out of the public library and ripping them, and then buying the book.) Also bought a copy of this Berlitz Spanish book at my new favorite bookstore in the 'hood, Dog-Eared (since it was only $4.86!); haven't used the Berlitz book much, but it looks to be pretty good--esp since it gives phonetic pronunciation guides for each phrase.

More on my discovery of Neruda en espanol later. It's time for breakfast now.