My Spanish class meltdown was back on June 18 - so I thought I would give an update now that a couple of weeks have passed.

First, I am really glad it happened. I talked to so many people, thought about it a lot, and had wonderful feedback from many blog friends. But the bottom line is that sometimes the really bad day is what you need to get you to analyze the situation, and from that, make progress.

I know I hadn't been working as hard as I had been at first. When I was just getting started I studied a ton and constructed sentences all the time. I don't know why I had let up on myself, but I do accept responsibility for that.

Everyone learns in a different way, and Paul and I are polar opposites. He can retain information without even writing a note for himself. I need to write things down and review a lot. As long as he knows what he wants to say in English, he can get there in Spanish. His accent is excellent. I keep measuring myself against him, and I shouldn't. I should also give myself credit where I deserve it.

So, I spent the meltdown week really working hard, creating cheat sheets for myself, and working on the irregular verbs in each tense. It worked. I feel like I know how to approach the next phase of my education. I'm also working hard at not getting rattled if I don't know something.

We are going to take a little break from class for about a month starting in the middle of July. I'm going to the US for a week, and after that we plan on a trip somewhere in Mexico for probably a week. When we come back from the break the next phase of our learning will incorporate all the work we've done so far - so I am going to make a determined effort to have a solid base to move forward from.

Don't laugh at my cheat sheets, above.....they work for me!