Never Too Late for Spanish Express

My wife Joan and I enjoyed and benefitted greatly from a weeklong language immersion with Pilar Martinez of Spanish Express at her lovely home outside of Valencia. We are both retirees interested in recovering and building upon school Spanish to chat with friends from Latin America in their mother tongue and to enhance travel experiences in Spanish-speaking countries. We were looking for an in-country program that would get us off to a strong start but that would also provide more of a vacation than a school-like experience. Happily, we stumbled upon Spanish Express’s home immersion program whose combination of small group learning, daily excursions to cultural and historic sites, and continual interaction with an instructor outside of formal teaching offered just what we wanted.

Pilar did everything possible to make our experience a positive one. Before we arrived, she provided online lessons that helped us to relearn long-forgotten basic vocabulary and grammar. During the immersion, she connected formal language instruction to our personal interests, giving us added motivation to move forward. Our informal conversations with her (a mixture of English and Spanish at our level) over the delicious meals she prepared for us, as well on the daily excursions, provided further opportunities for learning. She was a warm and gracious host who made us feel at home.

There’s only so much one can accomplish in a week, but, at the very least, we emerged with confidence that we could eventually reach our goals for Spanish. To this end, we are continuing to study with Pilar through weekly online lessons.