Prepping for a Big Trip

I am using an IOS app named Duolingo to learn Spanish, in preparation for our trip to the Galapagos Islands and Ecuador later this year. I try to spend 20 minutes a day moving through the enjoyable learning tools the program uses. There is even a chance for me to speak a phrase in Spanish and have the app listen for errors. This seems amazing to me. Time will tell whether I have really learned enough of the language to help Darlene and her sister Deb and me when we are on the trip.

Duolingo is like a game, and that is the genius of it. When you get a word right, there is a satisfying ding, and when you complete a lesson a musical instrument celebrates your triumph. I think it’s a trumpet. When new vocabulary arrives, it is with photos of the items described. A favorite game of mine presents about a dozen words in blocks, and you tap on the two that make a correct pair. I fly through those and love the action of making the links on the fly.

Part of my preparation is learning how to create a blog post on my iPhone Six Plus, using a nifty foldable Bluetooth keyboard from Microsoft. The key action is responsive, and the keys have a soft, slightly rubbery feel to my finger tips. The keys on the left and right are separated by quite a gap, which enables the keyboard to fold into a convenient square shape, but my touch typing seems to adapt pretty well to the layout.

I bought a Kmashi cradle for the iPhone, which is okay but I may keep looking for one that enables me to use the phone in vertical mode while using the charger cable. As it is, I can only have the phone powered when I am in landscape mode. What I like is the soft touch to the cradle and how snugly the phone nestles into it.

I plan to use this hitherto largely dormant blog as my travel blog during the trip, so stay tuned!

Send to Kindle
This entry was posted in Technology, Travel, Uncategorized and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.