Embracing my inner nerd

Today was my day off and for a change I decided I would be more productive if I stayed in Waterford. I usually head home to the gym but I've been doing a small workout at home and I haven't been eating crap so weighing it up I figured I could probably risk skipping a class or two without turning into a complete blimp. Aside from the super exciting task of cleaning my apartment, the number one item on my to do list was to pay a visit to my local library and see if they had anything that could help me learn Irish. I had tried the internet and can't say I was ever going to get very far with any of the free websites I had managed to gather. I don't do so well with links on my computer. Mostly they sit in neatly organized folders on my browser and remain untouched. However with an actual book I am more inclined to sit down and study. 

It seems I was in luck as the library had buckets of stuff to help me learn a language I should already know so I promptly signed myself up for a 2 month trial membership ( mostly because it costs less and my wages don't come in until Thursday but let's just say it's because I am fully expecting to be fluent by that time. It sounds more impressive). And feeling very pleased with myself I headed home with a teach yourself irish book and cd, exercise book and another one on grammar. Sure I'd only be able to move to the Gaeltacht full time before the summer was out. Eager to act while the enthusiasm was on high, I started my studies straight away and discovered a number of things. One of these would be precisely how much Irish I have forgotten since leaving school, I'm not sure but I think it might be more than they even taught me in the first place. Another is that right now the grammar book might as well be written in latin, it's all very confusing and I wasn't able to take any of it in. This lead me to an executive decision to leave the grammar book until I have effectively taught myself Irish ( using the the teach yourself Irish book, of course) and hopefully then it will make some bit of sense, hopefully. I also realized that the exercise book actually requires a cd that I don't have so I can actually listen to the dialogues it keeps referencing. 

I made good progress, you know for day one. I got through the introduction/ pronunciation part and two other chapters which isn't bad going. The words mostly sound familiar and some of the grammar rules are ringing a bell but I don't really know how much of it is actually sinking in. I am finding that trying to relearn Irish is making me feel stupid and then old. Old because I remember the reason my Irish is so poor is that I haven't used it at all since I sat my Leaving cert 14 years ago. Yup that old. I am hoping as I go on it will start to seem more familiar and maybe some of what I learned in school will come back to me or else I am really in trouble for my grand master plan of studying leaving cert higher level Irish this coming September. At the rate I am currently going I'd have to bribe someone or sleep with them to pass and these days it seems I don't have a whole lot of spare cash so it's not looking good for me.