If you have been reading this blog for awhile, you may know that learning Spanish has been a pandemic project for me. Oh, I actually started a little over two years ago, but since last March, I’ve stepped up my daily Spanish practice.

I often equate learning a musical instrument with learning a foreign language —it’s maybe a heck of a lot easier when you’re young, rather than when you are in the twilight. For my adult organ students, I tell them the most important factor in achieving success is patience. Often I have adults who come to me saying, “I took organ lessons in college,” or “I used to play the piano when I was a kid,” and then they are hit with the hard reality of learning music and all the practice it entails when learning many years later.

I’ll never forget the adult student I had a number of years ago who decided to take up the organ as a summer project. Even though he practiced up to 4 hours a day, he (and I) decided that no matter how many hours you practice, or how many lessons you take, there are some people who just won’t “get” it, and will find the organ too challenging.

My day starts with Duolingo, a language learning platform (app) on my phone that I reach for almost from the moment I wake up. Working with Duolingo is almost like playing a game—you get points, crowns, and other rewards for correct answers, and there are cute graphic cartoons when you complete a lesson in addition to the points you accumulate, there is the pressure of keeping up your streak—days in which you have a continuous record of learning—Duolingo sends you frequent reminders to practice. As of today, I have an unbroken streak of 560 days and 126,505 points!

I usually spend about half an hour with Duolingo and then head outside for my daily walk. That’s when I wear my earbuds and listen to a Spanish podcast. Duolingo has its own podcasts of real world Spanish speakers and their experiences, plus I listen to about half a dozen other podcasters who teach through podcasts.

Daily I attend a Zoom session called Cada Dia Spanish which uses an immersion type of learning through social media. The approach is how you learned your native language—by listening and repeating, rather than learning grammar, with the emphasis on fun. The class also has daily homework assignments, essay writing and verbal practice.

Every afternoon, Mondays through Fridays, I have a tutoring session with Vreni Griffith, a chorister from the Lutheran Church of Honolulu and frequent travel companion to Europe. We are together watching “Destinos,” a Spanish telenovela (soap opera) with 52 episodes for learning the language, now for the second time, and I write a recap of each episode in Spanish. Vreni gives me a “fill in the blank” worksheet on each episode where I have to successfully conjugate up to 25-30 verbs used within the story context. What’s so great about Vreni as a travel guide is that she can speak just about every European language that the situation may call for—French, Spanish, Italian, German, Greek, etc.—plus even a little Japanese!

Every night when I have finished my Spanish “homework,” then I can sit back and enjoy Spanish telenovelas. In addition to Destinos, I have also watched La Casa de las Flores (The House of Flowers), Extra, The Home Edit, Nailed It Mexico and Jane the Virgin (100 episodes), all in Spanish! Right now I’m up to my 71st (out of 121) episode of Silvana Sin Lana and am enjoying it immensely.

Why am I trying so hard to learn Spanish? This is one of the questions we are asked all the time in Cada Dia Spanish. This is my answer:

Quiero aprender español porque mi nuera es mexicana y es bilingüe completamente aunque nunca tomó una clase de inglés. Ella solo aprendió viendo peliculas americanos. Mi nieto, Andrés, tiene tres años y entiende inglés y español igualmente, pero solo contesta en español. Sin embargo, el conoce cientos de palabras en inglés pero habla con acento español. ¡Qué lindo!

[I want to learn Spanish because my daughter-in-law is Mexican and is completely bilingual although she never took an English class. She only learned by watching American movies. My grandson, Andrés, is three years old and understands English and Spanish equally but only answers in Spanish. However, he knows hundreds of English words but speaks with a Spanish accent. How cute!]

Next time I write about this, I’ll tell you why, when you try to learn a third (or fourth) language, your immediate reaction is to answer in your second language. I can’t tell you how many times when someone asks me a question in Spanish, I already know the answer … but in French! The same thing happened to me when I was learning Japanese — my first reaction was in French!