One benefit of shelter-in-place, I am now at over 130 consecutive days of doing my Duolingo Spanish lessons.

I have been doing this for quite a while, but this is the longest streak I have ever achieved.  I seldom missed more than a day or two – but I also seldom ever made it more than a month without a day or two break.

You would think I’d be pretty fluent by now.

Nope.

I read Spanish much better than I can understand the spoken word or write Spanish.

And Duolingo is sneaky – the further into the program you go – the faster they speak Spanish.

Also, I don’t know if they fixed the program or if it is just something they add later in the program, but now when I make a mistake I often get an explanation about the grammar.  Duolingo never used to do that; and it is very helpful.

However, Duolingo also expects you to figure out some grammar by yourself – like, if you say, I am showering, it would be Estoy ducharme; but if you say, you are showering – it would be Tu estas ducharte; or we are showering – Estamos ducharnos.  See the difference?  It took me quite a while to figure out how those little endings work and how they are tied to the subject of the sentence.

Yikes!  Just how smart does Duolingo think I am?  Whatever it thinks, it has overestimated!

I like that it randomly has you review lessons each day – but on some days, the program does not suggest which lessons, so on those days, I have taken to working my way through old lessons (in order) until I can get the more recent lessons more firmly stuck into my little pea brain.

I am a wiz at the earliest lessons; but it goes downhill quickly from there.

But that’s okay.

I’m still sitting here without anything much else to do.

Or at least, without anything much I want to do.

So I’ll just keep plugging along with my Duolingo.