Well I started another Spanish class today!
I am now in Basico 3, yes, I know you are all impressed, only one more level in Basico, then 3 levels of Intermediate, then Advanced - WOOOOOHOOOO!!
The classes are through UNAM which a University out of Mexico City. This tends to make the examples in the book interesting, as well as some of the pronunciations, as they relate to Mexico City and use the Nahuatl pronunciations rather than our Mayan pronunciations. Sort of like sending someone from Savannah Georgia up to Hoboken New Jersey. Sure the words are the same, it's just tricky to figure them out.
I am also taking a Cooking Class through IMSS, which is Mexico's Social Security branch. They offer a lot of classes to help the citizens with things like improving their health; cooking, physical fiteness, mental gymnastics, self-defense, etc. The thing for me about the cooking class isn't the cooking, but that it is attended by mainly Mexicans, and therefore is entirely in Spanish. We foreigners are able to attend, we just don't.
It's just too dificult to live here and not be able to do simple things-today I asked a bus driver in what I know was correct Spanish, and I'm told I have a very good 'local' accent if he passed down calle 70 through calle 77. He kept looking at me like I was speaking Martian. In fact people in hearing range repeated exactly what I said back to him, he still didn't get it, well maybe it wasn't me after all.
So my quest to speak Spanish continues...