I'm seriously considering whether I should take up Spanish language again.

Yesterday I attended a one-day workshop on Spanish culture, food and language which was held in collaboration with Las Lilas (the Spanish language school I used to go to) and Tanjong Pagar CC. Was very interested in it cos I am actually planning to visit Spain somewhere in March next year with some friends. So I thought it would be good to know a bit more about the culture, including some interesting places to see and interesting food to try. And since this was conducted by the director of Las Lilas, whom we call Tono, and was also my teacher for the last 2 modules I was in, I knew this was going to be quite an interesting workshop.

Anyway, being in that workhop reminded me of those days when I was at Las Lilas mugging over Spanish grammer of yo, tu, el, ella, usted... Just a few months ago I was telling people that I was done with Spanish language as I was too stressed and the content got too difficult. In fact, in the last 2 modules everytime Tono called my name I'd freak out and my mind would totally go blank and then, of course, no answers would come out, which stressed me even more. Which was why when Tono recognized me in the workshop I mildly freaked out again, half-expecting that he would ask me some question in Spanish which would again totally stump me and stress me out.

And there's the cost of this lessons. I'm not exactly earning a lot and $200 to $300 a module is still quite a substantial amount for me.

I remember I said in one of my resolutions to at least be able "to speak simple Spanish and understand at least the gist of what people are saying without English translation". I think I'm kinda halfway there yet cos although I can understand the gist I can't actually speak it well, which accounts to most of the stress when I was a student at Las Lilas. Main problem for me was really the grammer, how the Spanish have different words when used in the context of "I", "you", "he", "she", "we", "they" etc... And I could never remember the correct way of forming a gramatically correct sentence.

Then in the last part of the last module I took (Elementry 2), the past tense of all these words came into the syllabus. Oh. My. Goodness.

But somehow that workshop rekindled that desire to learn Spanish again. It was indeed an interesting workshop that was made for prospective visitors to Spain which talked about the various attractions, specialities, differences and other interesting facts in different regions in Spain. Tono also talked about some food unique to Spain such as the tortilla espanola, paella, tapas etc and even showed videos on how those dishes are prepared. He also taught some really basic Spanish greetings and numerals, and admitted (gasp!!) that if he taught the participants at the workshop the grammer (that "yo - soy", "tu - eres" thingy) everyone would probably flee.

Anyway, back to Spanish language. Now that I am not too far away from my last module, maybe it is time to seriously consider going back to it again. Or else it would really be a waste.

So, should I start it over again?