Rosetta Stone

PC (Peace Corps) was nice enough to give me a free online subscription to Rosetta Stone, so I've recently been using it to jump-start my Swahili skills. I'm supposed to complete 40 hours before leaving, and I'm already at 11. I'm hoping to surpass the 40 and just do as much as possible because I know the more I can cram in before leaving the better off I will be when thrust into a homestay with a non-English-speaking family for PST (Pre-Service Training) in Tanzania. Rosetta Stone is so repetitive and immersing that I can definitely see that it's helping me. So far it hasn't been too hard thanks to the 2 semesters I did take of Swahili in college, but I just finished Unit 2 and I can tell it's definitely increasing in difficulty. Some of the sentences are just so dumb it makes me laugh. When am I going to need to say "The dog is not a man"???? Or my favorite so far: "There are 2 balls in the right hand of the woman and 2 balls in the left hand of the woman." Wow, so many balls! She's got her hands full! (Oh, the places my mind takes me...) Obvsiously the hardest part is the actual speaking. I'm sure I can understand a lot more than I could say right now, which is normal with language learning. Some of the words just get me so tongue-tied though...especially when a 3 syllable word somehow has 4 'Z's in it. Crazy.
Here are my plans for the rest of the day in the best Swahili I can muster:

Nimesoma Kiswahili. Sasa Mama yangu ni mimi tutatembea mwenye mbwa yangu. Nitaenda kucheza ngumu na kunywa bia mwenye rafiki yangu Justine.
Salama! (Peace!)