Visual Link Learn Spanish Newsletter (V:1; I:35)

Our Goal is to Support You in Learning Spanish!-----

At spanishprograms.com (owned by the U.S. Institute of Languages) our customers come first! We want your experience with Spanish to be a positive one. Our top concern is customer service; we have a great support web site, and we bend over backwards to help you learn Spanish. As part of our commitment to you, we even have a 6-Month money-back guarantee!

We also have free online Spanish lessons for the casual learner, a free computer CD-ROM for those who want to try a few of our lessons free before purchasing our Complete Course, and our complete Visual Link Spanish™ course for those of you who are serious about learning Spanish. We've received so many success stories of people who have tried many different Spanish courses without success and finally, with our course, were able to learn Spanish. See one of our recent success stories below.

Another Success Story:

"...Just wanted you to know how much I am enjoying the lessons. I had previously tried learning Spanish from some audio tapes, and also had a Spanish grammar book, but your system is by far the best. It is wonderful to be able to hear and see the words and phrases at the same time."

--Joy Outka, South Dakota

E-mail your Visual Link Spanish™ success stories to: dave@spanishprograms.com

Visit our Website: www.spanishprograms.com

Learn Spanish Words of the Week -----
Words taken from the "Communication" Section of our Complete Course.

	English	Spanish
Monday	I'm going to	(Yo) Voy a
Tuesday	He is going to	(El) Va a
Wednesday	She is going to	(Ella) Va a
Thursday	You are going to	(Usted) Va a
Friday	to practice	practicar
Saturday	the day after tomorrow	pasado mañana
Sunday	next week	la próxima semana
Bonus	next month	el próximo mes
Build Sentences!!	Have you ever noticed that you can build sentences with the words in the newsletters? For example, with the words above you could say, "I'm going to practice next week." The Complete Course builds on this idea.

Learn Spanish Culture ----- Sardines in the bus?

I am from Utah, where the public transportation system is anything but highly effective. Most everyone here has a car of their own and not many people ride the bus. When people try to ride the bus, they (the busses) are usually late, they only come every hour or less, or sometimes they don't even show up.

It was quite an experience for me to go to Latin America for the first time and see their public transportation system. People, especially in the smaller pueblos, don't have cars so they have to rely heavily on public transportation. City busses usually leave for destinations every 5 to 10 minutes and are usually very efficient at least in regard to keeping a regular departure schedule.

My first experience with a city bus was a real shocker. All the seats were taken so I went to the back of the bus, stayed standing up, and held on to the rail. As I stood there, more, and more, and more, and more people continued to get onto the bus. At first it wasn't too bad, and then suddenly I was pressed in so tightly I could hardly breathe. I felt like a sardine and wondered what the fire code enforcers of the United States would think if they could see all the people in our bus. I didn't even need to hold on to the rail anymore; all the people were packed in so tightly, there was no way someone could have fallen down.

Suddenly out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a sign that said the maximum occupancy for the bus was 35 people. I knew that somebody somehow was blatantly breaking some kind of rule.

I am about 6' tall and most Latin people are at least 6 inches shorter than me so I decided to count them all since I didn't have anything else to do but fight for every breath. Finally, by counting the people I could see, I came up with a number. There were a total of 72 people on that little bus that was supposed to hold only 35! I was amazed and had never seen so many people fit into such a small space. It was sort of like a circus act where a person fits into a very small box by moving their body in all sorts of unnatural ways.

As our destination began to get closer, I started to wonder how I was going to get out of the bus. All of a sudden we arrived and the native person I was with began to push and struggle his way to the front and off the bus. For a few moments, I felt like I was in a violent hockey game (where people fight for fun). Amazingly, we were able to get off the bus without serious injury. I immediately wondered if I would always have the same experience riding busses in Latin America.

The next few times I went on a city I had very similar experiences. Then one day I had a very different experience; I was one of the last to get on the bus. The bus doors were open and about seven people were on the entrance steps of a completely packed bus. The bus employee pushed me up onto the last available step. I had just enough space to put one foot on a small area of the step and hold on to a rail outside the bus. My whole body was completely outside of the bus and my life was being supported by one foot and one hand! For any of you that have driven in Latin America, as you know, it can be very crazy! Car drivers were whizzing by me like madmen. They came within, it seemed like, inches of knocking me off my perch. Luckily I survived and am here today to tell you about it.

Now you get to guess the moral of this week's story: (multiple choice)

a. Before you get into a Latin American bus, take a deep breath first because it may be your last for a while.
b. Learn how to count to 72 in Spanish.
c. Practice pushing people so you will be prepared to fight your way off at your destination.
d. Don't worry about the bus, take a taxi, it's much easier.

I will let you guess the answer, but if you're not sure, please e-mail me and I'd be glad to personally help you out. If you don't want to e-mail me, I'll give you a little hint -- next week we're going to talk about taxis.

¡Qué tengan un buen díacutea! (I hope you all have a good day!)


David S. Clark -- President
U.S. Institute of Languages
dave@spanishprograms.com
http://www.spanishprograms.com

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