First and second lesson

On Friday, I sat down with all my materials and cracked open Farber's book. I'd read the whole thing back in September but couldn't remember exactly how this "multi-track" attack went.

According to the book, I'm supposed to do 5 units of Spanish grammar before using any of my other stuff (phrase book (don't have this yet), flashcards, newspaper (also don't have this), and audio lessons). Ugh, grammar!

I open my grammar book and discover that the grammar units are incredibly long (20 some exercises per unit, 26 units total) and that it is in fact a *grammar* book, so I'm plopped down right in the middle of regular and irregular verb endings in the present tense.

I'm half tempted to go order Learning Spanish for Dummies or some other book where the units would be shorter, and they'd start with stuff like saying hello and how to introduce yourself, but I stick with the book I have. Challenging is good, and learning is good, right?

I put in about two hours between Friday and Sunday. I'm starting to catch on to verb endings in the present tense, but hardly any of the words they're throwing at me are sticking. I'm constantly using my dictionary (why didn't I have one of these in college?? What was I thinking?) and looking back to previous pages in the grammar book. I feel like I should be taking a bunch of notes or making flashcards for every word I come across, but the book says to wait until after I've done 5 units. Really, it's okay with me--the stack of flashcards would already be huge and intimidating.

I'm also struggling with the in-between works-in, with, the, for, etc...when I check my answers, I'm getting almost all of these wrong.

While I'm working, I remind myself that I didn't learn English in one day, so I'll take what I can and eventually all this stuff will come together.

On a side note, my dictionary is kind of amazing to me--having the Spanish language right there in my hands. Almost any word I need to know, right there. Cool.

I'm not finished with the first unit, but I'm getting closer.

Venzo los obstaculos!
(I overcome the obstacles)

P.S. Will figure out how to do accents and upside down punctuation soon