Week 3: Revenge of the Portuguese [Language]

Olá!

    This week's main highlight was class switching from learning how to teach to learning Portuguese. This was unfortunate timing because Monday class was one of my better days because I finally had gotten into the groove of class and was learning quite a bit while not be exhausted at the end of the day. Monday Elder Adams and I also had a TRC that went quite well. We talked about Repentance and Judgement and went pretty smoothly. We were supposed to have another lesson this week in only Portuguese but every slot was taken! We were pretty happy because the lesson would not have gone too smoothly with our very limited Portuguese.

    But back to classes. Tuesday morning was our last class in English, that afternoon it would switch over to Portuguese only. The afternoon class wiped me out, it was terrifying our instructor used many words that I had no comprehension of. We also did not do a good job of asking questions when we didn't understand. This left the teacher leaving us in the dust. Funnily enough, about half of my district took multiple years of Spanish which gave them the ability to understand about half of what the teacher was saying. I took American Sign Language which as you can imagine doesn't help too much. Another difficulty is that the instructor isn't allowed to use English at all during lessons, not even to explain something we don't understand. This has lead to many games of charades between the teacher, trying to explain an unfamiliar word and the class, attempting to understand.

    Another difficulty I am facing in learning Portuguese is memorization, I am struggling to remember every word we learn in class and worse off, we likely won't be reviewing much of what we have learned. This puts review in my court is extra challenging because after 6 to 7 hours of Portuguese it's hard to want to spend more time reviewing. I do my best though.

    This week switching to learning just Portuguese was exhausting and discouraging. I am not learning quickly or effectively, but I am still determined to go forward and put in my best effort.