When butchering roosters, I normally pressure-can the legs and wings, and freeze the carcass (breast/back) to use in crock pot meals. There isn't much meat on most roosters (and some of it is tough), so it's essential that the meat fall off the bone when it is cooked. Pressure canning and crock-potting does the trick.

4. Made two loaves of bread. The recipe I use costs $0.39 per loaf to make. It's very possible to buy bread for the same amount, which is why I don't bake bread often (plus we don't eat bread often). However, homemade bread is so, so yummy and Hubs really appreciates it. Having some bread on hand, fresh or in the freezer, is kind of "crutch" for me. We've been kind of busy and my meal planning (and meal making) has fallen by the wayside. Having bread will allow me to make easy meals (sandwiches, toast & gravy, etc.). Which will save money in the long run.

5. Earned $44.36 net profit at the farmers market. This was my last week for the summer selling at the market.  I'll be going back in September, when business picks up again. I figured out last year that when produce starts coming in, people stop buying baked goods and crafts. I noticed even in the last two weeks that despite great weather, my sales came down a bit. 

6. Sold eight dozen eggs this week (four at market, four to regular customers).

7. Used my Kindle to practice Spanish. Several years ago I purchased an ebook for learning Spanish. A year later I bought a Spanish dictionary to load onto the Kindle. Then I downloaded a free Spanish Bible and book of fairy tales onto the device. If there is a word I don't know, I can just tap the word and my Spanish dictionary will tell me what it is. This is SO much easier than keeping a real dictionary on hand and having to physically look up every work I don't know.

For any Spanish students, this is a relatively cheap and easy way to practice Spanish. We're headed off to Honduras in a little while, thus my practicing. Actually being in a Spanish-speaking country is an excellent way to learn Spanish. For the last couple years Hubs and I have tried to make it down to Central America about once a year. This time it is for a mission trip, but in the past we've gone just for fun (Hubs has friends there).

Honestly, short-term mission trips with a group are an expensive way to travel. If you strategically pick an airline and destination, you can spend several weeks in a country for the same amount you would pay to do a four-day mission trip. Obviously missionary compounds want to treat their volunteers well (many have never been outside the US), so volunteers get nice US-standard flights, accommodations and food. This accounts for the extra cost.

This will by my first mission trip ever, so I'm looking forward to the experience.

8. Line-dried three loads of laundry (that's $1.50 savings, if you didn't know...).

​9. Made yogurt (that's a $4.76 savings, if you didn't know...).

I think that about covers it! 

Goals for This Week:
1. Replant carrots
2. Weed garden
3. Organize pantry
4. Organize fridge
5. Organize desk area

In September I read about Duolingo in a blog post from the Prudent Homemaker. Duolingo is a free language learning program/phone app- almost like a game- that users can learn new languages or brush up on old ones with. I had planned to start studying Spanish again anyway, using the same great book as I had last year. However, I decided to give Duolingo a shot instead.

With its immersion format, levels and prizes, I found Duolingo absolutely addictive. Because I already knew the basic grammar and some vocabulary, I climbed the "language tree" rather quickly. Even practicing concepts that I already knew, I still managed to pick up new vocabulary words and reinforce verb conjugations, articles, etc. 

The rubber met the road when I started learning new verb tenses like present perfect, past perfect, future perfect, the use of the verb haber, modal verbs, things like that. While Duolingo offers very little if any grammatical explanation for these concepts, I "got the idea" pretty quick. I still plan on reading about these concepts before we leave for Central America, just so I can understand them better. But I will have to look elsewhere for information because Duolingo just doesn't have it. This being said, it is a great tool to have and very possible to learn new information and vocabulary with in a fun way.

Time Commitment
In the account settings, you can set a daily progress goal anywhere from "casual" (10 XP per day- takes 5-10 minutes) to "insane" (50 XP per day- takes 20-30 minutes). At first my goal was automatically set at 20 XP per day, but I did more than that because it was so addictive. In October when I stopped gardening and farmers market, I reset the goal to "insane". For the most part I was able to complete the daily goal, sometimes more, except on the weekends. Obviously as I leveled up the lessons took longer, but it was still very doable. I was able to complete the language tree (that is, work through the entire program) in three months. The way Duolingo works is that as time goes by, words or concepts will need to be re-practiced. Even though I technically completed the program, I can still log in and practice new concepts.

How much can you learn with Duolingo?
While Duolingo can teach new concepts, as was my experience, it can't bring you anywhere near fluency. Even after completing the language tree, Duolingo still says I am only 56% fluent. Honestly, I don't think any program or practicing system can bring you anywhere near fluent. Unless you've actually tried to have a REAL conversation in Spanish (not pre-scripted "hi, how are you? My name is Bethany" conversations), you won't understand how little ability you have. I remember asking Hubs (who really can have a Spanish conversation) what the intelligence level is of someone who had taken, say, Spanish I or II in high school. "Well, you could probably talk with a three-year-old." he answered thoughtfully. I thought this was an insult to students who had spent hours and hours completing assignments, but Hubs was being serious.

Last year we were sitting at a coffee shop in Antigua when a five- or six-year-old boy came and asked Hubs for some money. Amused, my husband carried on a short conversation with him. How old are you? Do you have brothers and sisters? Where are your parents? What do you like to do? I understood some of it, like when the boy said his older brother was fat. But I missed the part about his parents working at the coffee shop, and some other things. Though he didn't succeed in getting any money from us, Hubs let him look at the pictures on our phone and offered the little guy some of his cheesecake. 

Today was my last day of Spanish school. I've mentioned the school a few times in the past two weeks, but wanted to save most of it for this post.

My experience with the school was a good one. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. My first day, I sat down and the teacher started her lesson- speaking nothing but Spanish. The first two hours were a little rocky, with my trying to understand what she meant with my extremely limited vocabulary. There was a lot of "como se dice __" going on. By the end of the first day though, I got the jist of what she was trying to tell me, and our lessons had a predictable format.

Each lesson would usually start with some chit-chat and review of my homework, which consisted of writing 10-20 sentences and, toward the end, completing a worksheet or two. There were a lot of corrections. After homework, she would have me conjugate verbs. In English, for example, you can say "run", "ran" or "running". In Spanish, there is a word for each of the following: to run, I run, you run, we run, he/she runs, they run, I ran, you ran, we ran, he/she ran, they ran. And that is only in present tense and "preterit" tense, which is basically past tense. There are 12 more tenses that I have not even learned yet. My teacher Aura would alternate verb conjugation exercises with new concepts- things like pronouns, adverbs, and articles. Most nouns in Spanish are masculine or feminine. A masculine noun like "book" goes with the article "el". The feminine noun like "house" goes with the article "la". Therefore it is not simply "the house"- it is "la casa" or "el libro". Remembering which gender a thing is can be hard. Most of the time when talking to my teacher, I would use the wrong gender. It's something you just have to memorize, like the verb conjugations.

At 10:00 am, two hours into our lesson, all of the students got a 30 minute break where we could get a cup of tea or coffee, talk with the other students, go for a walk outside or buy something at the pastry shop across the road. This was SUCH a relief for me. I did not realize how hard it would be to sit for two hours talking and trying to understand only Spanish. A popular comment from the students (including myself!) was "my brain hurts". Using a language you don't understand well requires a lot of concentration. 

After break, we would go back to verb conjucation exercises and writing grammer rules and new concepts in my little notebook. Toward the end of the lesson, Aura would read a paragraph and have me tell her what I remembered about it. Then she had me read the paragraph, as she corrected any pronunciation mistakes that I had. After that, oftentimes she would read me vocabulary words and I would write down the ones I didn't know. Finally at the end of the lesson (and it always seemed like a loooong lesson) she would give me homework for the next day.

In the 40 hours that I spent with my teacher, I felt like I learned a lot. But I had to laugh at this chart we found in one of the classrooms. Notice my level after 50-60 hours of study and Hubs' level after speaking Spanish for eight years. 

There is definitely a lot more to learn! It felt like I learned a lot in the past week and a half, and I did learn a lot considering the time frame. It's crazy to think about the fact that I spent 40 hours learning from someone in a language that is not my own. I actually understood and learned. After school I could tell Hubs "my teacher said this" or "my teacher said that".

Spanish school here in Antigua is a great deal, in my opinion. My 40 hours of instruction cost $232.50. That comes out to $5.81 per hour for a private Spanish tutor. Here are some things I learned about Spanish school and things I would do differently in order to get the most bang for your buck.

1. Learn as much as you can before you go. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to memorize vocabulary words and make flashcards. I would recommend going through the book Easy Spanish Step-by-Step by Barbara Bregstein. It has a ton of vocabulary words, grammar rules and exercises to give you a good (cheap) foundation. Best of all, it explains everything in English- which you won't get at Spanish school. Reading this book will help you understand and start conjugating verbs, which is what I spent a lot of time doing at school. If I would have memorized my conjugations well before coming down here, I would have had more time to learn new things instead of practicing verbs over and over. 

2. Bring your notes from home and a Spanish-English dictionary. I spent weeks going through the above-mentioned book and taking notes- writing vocabulary and grammar rules. If I would have brought these notes with me, I could have saved a lot of writing time and could have studied better. Similarily, a dictionary would have been helpful as well. My husband makes a pretty good Spanish-English dictionary, but not everyone has that. Without notes or a dictionary, you will be limited to what vocabulary you learn at school.

3. Bring an unused full-sized notebook with dividers. I brought a dinky half-used notebook to school with me, and spent a lot of time flipping through pages trying to find stuff. When I get home I'll have a Spanish-only notebook with dividers for vocabulary, verbs, grammar concepts and homework.

The best part of Spanish school was not learning grammar or new words. A book can teach me that. The best part was having my own personal teacher to have conversations with; someone who talked back to me and corrected me when I made mistakes. I got to ask questions about making tortillas and why prisoners ride around in "cages" on the back of pickup trucks. I learned that if you have problems you have "nails", and that "taking the thread" means you are finally starting to understand an idea. These are things I never would have learned out of my book.

The other valuable thing about school was learning correct pronunciation and being forced to speak Spanish. Books attempt to describe pronunciation, but it is not the same as hearing it in person. About halfway through my classes, I noticed that Aura pronounced "n" sounds so that "en" sounded like "eng". I had never read about this or noticed it in other Guatemalans until I spent half a day listening and trying to repeat. Likewise, in my home study I never had to explain what homeschooling was or how far away I lived from my parents.

You may be wondering, "what if I pick up bad habits trying to learn on my own?" I wouldn't worry too much about bad pronunciation if you are trying to learn Spanish by reading and writing. 1) Because you aren't TALKING a lot, and 2) because a teacher does not guarantee good pronunciation. We heard plenty of bad pronunciation at school, from students that had been there three or four weeks. There were a few words that I habitually mispronounced, but after a week of correction I had broken the habit.

Spanish school is a great opportunity, but don't waste it learning grammar or writing down vocabulary words. Start with a good, cheap book and learn by yourself until you think you are ready to have a half-decent conversation in Spanish.

-Bethany