Fearing the Firehose

We started out the day with an introduction to the lab. The lab supervisor wanted to show us everything available to us, so she had control of all of our desktops and got to do all the pointing and clicking. It is almost like she knew I would have been exploring around on my own (look...shiny thing!) rather than seeing everything that was available...

She also exposed me for the dork that I am, when she asked the 32ish of us in there who had already purchased 3x5 index cards and sharpees, and I was one of only two to raise their hands. (But in my defense, I needed a legal pad and they had pretty colored ones at the store, which is almost like a shiny thing). Now they have all of that on computer, and if I had a cooler phone than I do (damn you AT&T and your monopoly on the iPhone! Let my people (Verizon) have it!), I could even have them on my phone. Now that could be a fun way to do flash cards!

She also showed us how we could get access to Rosetta Stone for free, but warned us that we will "outgrow" it within three weeks. Yep, language learning at FSI by firehose. Fear the firehose!

Of course, my teacher then proceeded to lull us what I know will be a false sense of security by showing us all the cognates in this language (despite the fact that my friend who was in this course last year told me there weren't). Awesome! After day one, I have a maybe 50 word vocabulary. But I know it is coming. The firehose is coming.

And we will all be drinking from it.