Language Study: Day 6

It is Day 6 and I feel like I need to say something about learning the language since most of you know what a stressor this was for me.
We started meeting with our language teacher last Monday.
We can read the symbols (letters) completely.  This feels like a huge accomplishment. 
I'm about to write out some of the struggles in learning this, but I want to really focus on the good...!
You should hear it, I sound like I'm a robot.  On top of that, our teacher told us today that we aren't even close to a 1st grade level because 1st graders that have grown up here know many more words.

Humbling.

The other problem is that, over the weekend, my vocab. list of "butter," "salt," "sugar," and "onion" all started sounding the same to me.  In a group of words, I think I could pick out the right match, but if I had to say the right word at the market, I wouldn't buy the right thing.  So...I know sugar starts with the same sound..."sh".  Oh gee...I need to go practice.

Real quick, the other observation is that I've picked up an Italian accent.  Yes, you read that right.  A lot of the words end in a vowel.  Specifically, "i".  So, somewhere, my mind has put "ending in i" with "I'm Italian."  It sounds funny, but in reality, it's hard to focus on NOT being Italian on top of everything else!

Okay...more language learning updates as we continue into verb conjugation tomorrow!!