During the week of July 29, 2014, I participated in an intensive Spanish course for non-Spanish speakers at the Spanish school Nueva Lengua in Cartagena, Colombia. I came with some exposure to Spanish and some communication skills, but very little formal Spanish. Along with seven other students, I was very lucky to have Jesus as my teacher.

He is a lovely, interested and interesting person, and an exceptional teacher with an energetic and dynamic style. He was also very well prepared for class, so we were able to accomplish a significant amount in one week. He managed to teach the group three different verb tenses/forms that are used predominantly for speaking, tohigh level of proficiency, as well as a significant amount of vocabulary. Jesus is also a professor of history, which I think was a bonus as the comprehension texts that we studied featured, architectural, historical,natural and geographic elements from Cartagena, and other South American countries, which I found to be really interesting and useful.

Now that I am continuing my travels in Colombia,and South America, I am so happy to say that I can not only communicate, but I can actually hold a conversation. I am proud of my accomplishmentsthis past week, and very grateful to Jesus.

This article was originally written in English