Hallo!

We’re thinking about spending the holidays in Amsterdam because as much as we love our family, Christmas just isn’t as exciting as when we were eight.

To really make our plan to visit Amsterdam a reality and inspire us to save up for the big trip, Rosetta Stone offered to provide me with their award winning software to learn Dutch! Let me just tell you that I barely passed Spanish in high school (I believe my instructor said “Catalina – drop out or flunk out!” when she heard I signed up for Spanish 2) so I didn’t have high hopes of catching on to Dutch too quickly, but the program has been amazing.

Rosetta Stone uses “dynamic immersion” to teach language, which means I’m learning Dutch through images, intuition, interactivity, instruction and environment. When I’m completing a module, I’m completely focused on the language, just like how we all learned to speak our first language.

After just a few core lessons, it’s easy to see why Rosetta Stone is the #1 language software and the fastest way to learn any language. I especially like how easy it is to go back and repeat a lesson or part of a lesson. Here’s a few seconds of me in the middle of a lesson. I even threw in a spontaneous “hallo!”

I also have a few favorite lines…

• De vrouw leest (the woman reads)
• De vrouw drinkt (the woman drinks)
• I love to say een meisje (the girl)
• I know that if a word ends in -en then more than one person is involved (lezen, drinken), but it’s pronounced -eh!

Okay, so I’m obviously a beginner, but things are going much much smoother than my previous attempts at foreign language, and I plan on keeping up with my Rosetta Stone lessons until our trip finally materializes, so expect updates and more videos on my quest to learn Dutch!

Toot ziens!