Hello!

My name is Marina Alonzo, I started this blog to talk about my Costa Rica language immersion trip with EF Playa Tamarindo. However, I did not fulfill my duty as a blogger to keep the blog up. Now I’m beginning to make this blog more about languages in the new year (2018).

My Language Journey

So, I am currently learning French, and improving my Spanish from Costa Rica. My dad’s family is Hispanic, so when it came time to learn languages in middle school, I was overjoyed. When I told my parents I wanted to learn French, that idea was shut down. Almost immediately. I was going to learn Spanish because that’s what my Grandma’s family speaks. I was fine with this because Spanish was better than nothing, and I loved watching Dora when I was little. So, I learned Spanish for one year until I was completely burnt out. I learned online, and I was not as motivated as I thought I’d be. I’d always loved languages, when I went to China for stem cells in 2011, I learned basic Chinese. When I went to school at a blind and deaf school, I learned ASL. I’ve always had a hidden passion for learning languages. It came to light in 2015, when I went to Thailand. If you’re thinking I learned basic Thai, your half right. Due to stem cells being open to people all over the world, I was able to get back into Spanish. So, I also learned basic Spanish (again).

I went home and forgot all about it. Until I had to return to school, and I needed an extra elective. I wanted to do chorus, but it wasn’t available in that period. So, my mom put me in Spanish II. I was fine with that, because of all the Spanish I learned in Thailand.

By the end of that summer, I had scheduled a trip to Costa Rica for the next summer with EF International Language Centers. That is why I even started this blog. However, I didn’t keep up, mostly because everything was the same. I wanted to blog more for tourists, but I should’ve started with a language blog that also helped traveling in Playa Tamarindo. I went as an elementary level Spanish speaker and came back fluent. It was ultimately the best experience of my life thus far. It was only a two-month trip, but I feel like I traveled enough through Costa Rica, and do not need to return. I tested out of 12 college credits in Spanish when I returned.

Since I’ve been back, I took a break for six months from Spanish. This was a bad decision on my part because there are 0 Spanish speakers in my town, so it’s not like I got any practice outside of my Italki lessons, which I stopped during my break. During this break, I began learning French and starting with the basics. This was in class for my senior year in high school. I loved it. I was finally able to learn French. For Christmas, my mom told me that I could start French lessons on Italki if I kept up my Spanish on Italki. I was fine with that because I knew I’d lost a lot of it.

Three or four weeks into one Spanish lesson a week, and I decided I wanted to take the DELE test. So, Spanish was no longer supposed to be my primary learning language, until I decided to take this test. A level ahead of where I was on the CEFLR scale. Going from a B2 level, where I am, to a C1 level takes nine months to prepare for. So, Veteran’s Day weekend, I will be heading to a different state, to take the DELE exam.