Hi to anyone actually reading this :)

I've been a member here for a few weeks now and thought I might get more use out of the site than the occasional messages I share with my Spanish speaking friends :) I'll be quite unoriginal and start with a brief introduction;

I'm Linda. I'm Norwegian. I consider myself to be a bilingual (Norwegian/English) even though I did not learn English until I was six or seven. I've always been very fond of languages in general and once had a dream to become a fully fledged polyglot. Unfortunately my love for languages is not matched by my level of patience, a virtue I am sorely lacking. I studied French in middle school, then switched to German in high school and had a short fling with Italian at uni. Now I am trying to learn Spanish, and to my great joy and relief I'm finding it very easy! I just read through some short blog posts in Spanish and was thrilled to discover that I could understand most of it.

I'm not going to classes or using a course but am relying on resources found on the Internet, in addition to my trusted flash cards on my iPhone :) I have also taken out some Spanish (childrens') novels from our local library, which have taught me loads. So far I've read Charlie y la fabrica de chocolate and Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal. I'm currently reading El pequeno vampiro. I'm also constantly challenging myself to try and express things in Spanish, whether I'm telling the kids to be quiet or listing the groceries I'm buying. I feel it helps. I was chuffed to bits yesterday when I was cooking dinner and complained to my daughter that "mis dedos huelen como salchichas"  and I went to check if I had gotten it right and I had! :) It's totally random but it made me happy that I was able express other things than introducing myself and ordering food. My usual test of command of a language is "If you were dumped in the middle of [insert country here] would you be able to get food, somewhere to sleep, book a ticket to go home, explain what you were doing in the middle of [insert country here] ?" - I now feel that after six months of messing about with flash cards and reading kids' books I would do a good job of getting around if I ever woke up in the middle of a Spanish speaking county. :-) Obviously there would still be a lot of waving my hands about and possibly even some cursing in Norwegian, but I'd be alright :)

Ok, I'm rambling now, which tells me it's time to wrap it up.

For my next blog entry I challenge myself to write something in Spanish.