FDW (Frau Dot Wilson) wrote: > It's VERY affordable to travel to Mexico, although > it is somewhat easier/more fun when you go with a > fluent Spanish speaker.
Well, as Forest Gump might have said, affordable is as affordable does. I'm thinking about combined costs for airfare, loging, and program costs for a family of 5 compared the same for a trip to Europe. Keep in mind that for me, the primary cost of going to Europe (from the Northeastern US) is the airfare. Although I would be going for an organized program, it's organized by volunteers for people on a budget and usually involves camping in one form or another. Going to Mexico would involve signing up for some kind of instruction. I've seen programs advertised, but I haven't quite yet started comparing prices. This was just an idea in the back of my head till I found out (a) that the national Esperanto convention is going to be in San Diego / Tijuana next year, and (b) that Mar C (maro-sea - get it?) runs a progam similar to what I had in mind. Quanto a hablantes fluentes, no verdad hablo espaniol, pero puedo entiende muchas cosas. Aprendo ahora. Puedo dicer cosas importantas como "Kisas esta un comprar mejor, pero no nececito un iguana." No problemo. > Most of Baja California seems to speak English, too, > so that's a plus. For my purposes, it's a minus. When my son was small (well, he's six, which is still somewhat small) we went camping every year in Europe with other families who speak Esperanto. This was an incredible boost for the kids use of the language. When I lost my job we stopped going, and now that I'm working again, my wife is hoping we can start going again, since my daughter is somewhat behind where my son was at the same age, and she thinks this happened because she hasn't been overseas since she was a baby. When I think about how much money is involved, I start to ask myself what else we could do with the same money. Quebec and Mexico spring to mind -- of course, this means learning a *new* language rather than reinforcing the Esperanto. My wife isn't so much interested in learning something new at this point, but Jonah's already learning Spanish in school and my daughter will be going to the same school sooner or later... and one of the reasons we decided to speak Esperanto at home in the first place was that we thought it would help the kids learn other languages later on. At this point, I'm at the risk of turning very philosophical very quickly. What is value? If the same strides could be made at home by the mother becoming more consistent in speaking the home language, have we created the same value without spending a cent? How do you compare seeing old friends with making new ones in terms of value? Amike salutas, Thomas/Tomaso ALEXANDER. www.NightinGael.Net ---Anything below this line is not from Thomas --- __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/multilingualmunchkin/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
