Day 2 & 3

I have to tell you that I have been learning a lot during this experience, especially, I was thinking how easy it is to live with the bare minimum.  Our second day here happened to be Canada Day, nothing was open and we really needed to get some cash! so we ventured downtown trying to find an ATM. We finally found one. On our way back we stopped by a very beautiful Catholic Church, we decided to go in, there was a souvenir store right at the entrance and then the majesty of the stained glass windows  in the ceiling, it was awesome! The best part was to talk to the priest, we have learned to say bonjour and merci, so that's all we said and for whatever he said in between we just nodded and smiled! :0)

My daughters are better at taking risks and use the words they hear other using, I admire this, it really made me feel proud of them.

On our second day here I did had to prepare dinner and I was so happy that I brought my iron pan because, since there are no baking pans, I could use it to prepare my sweet potatoes. Also there was no salt and since everything was closed today we couldn't get some. Anyway, my hubby made some pasta and we used some packets of parmesan cheese that we had gotten one time when we order calzones, they finally came on handy.

Our our third day we finally venture downtown Montreal. The adventure started at the train station, the cashier was trying very hard to understand me and to use English, I finally understood how the train thingy works and we got our tickets. Super crazy!!! The train was super fast! We went to the Museum, which is really four buildings with four levels each to see. It was awesome! There was one of the workers there who told Estrella not to touch something and I didn't understand the exact words but I got the point, which made me realized that my students do that a lot, they might not understand the exact words, but when they see my actions, they get it.
I had to tell the guy that I didn't speak French and he talked to me in Spanish! I was surprised!

There were drawing pads in certain parts of the Museum so people could just sit and draw the sculpture in front of them.

In conclusion, in my living simple experiment, in the first three days I felt that I had all that I needed. In our language learners experience, I realized how hard it is to take risks but it is so worthy, people really appreciates it when you use their mother tongue, I feel very proud of my students when they use Spanish, but I am beginning to understand them better, understand how hard it is to take that first step, how scary it is, and how much their poor little heads must hurt when everybody is speaking in a language that they still are not use to yet! (that was me this last three days!)

So, did you have a hard time taking that first step when trying a new language? what kind of strategies have you seen your students use when taking that risk?