Reflecting on 5ish Months of Classes +Photo Gallery

Happy Memorial Day, US friends! We are closing in on our sixth month living in Bilbao, and I have also just wrapped up my seventeenth week of intensive Spanish language courses at Instituto Hemingway. I’ve also completed an informal course in mobile software dev, and since I hadn’t posted much recently, I thought I might share a few quick photos from the last couple of months.

Intensive Spanish Language Classes

My single largest activity since January has been to improve my ability in the Spanish language, including four hours every day of intensive study. Officially, I have passed the A2 level, as defined by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, and have completed most of the textbook for B1.

What does this mean? Well, I would say I am by no means close to being a fluent speaker, however, I’ve come a long way towards being able to carry on general conversation and comfortably make basic business transactions. I still feel like listening and comprehension is my greatest challenge. It takes me a minute to get “momentum” in a conversation; to switch into Spanish mode, if you will. If a person approaches me at random in the street and blasts me with a paragraph of rapid Spanish? Forget about it. I’m still in a phase where I need to be fully focused to listen and understand, and that’s no simple task for me. Happily though, I do sense that I’m making steady progress, poco a poco.

I’m taking a pause from the intensive courses over the next few months, as I’m about to head back to the US for a couple of weeks, and want to have more free time during the summer to enjoy País Vasco when I return. I’m likely to continue taking the less intensive (read: fewer hours) form of the courses in the meantime to maintain my comprehension, and perhaps return to intensive come the fall or winter. After all, if I’m going to spend a year or more in Spain, I ought to be able to come away claiming I’m a competent speaker of the language.

CS193p, Developing Apps for iOS

In my spare time, I also completed the lectures and homework assignments for Stanford CS193p. This was a good learning experience, though I already had a background having created and published a few apps already. The Stanford course helped to polish some of the abilities I already had, and introduced a few key concepts and capabilities of iOS that I wouldn’t have sought out on my own.

My GitHub page includes a repository for the code I wrote and my notes from watching the lectures and completing the homework. There are three apps in total that are created during the 15-lecture course, two card games and an art/drawing app.

The card games were used to introduce many of the basics of iOS development, including Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) architecture, interactions including different types of gestures and animations, and UI elements such as images, buttons, and navigations. I actually play the set game a bit now myself, it’s pretty fun!

The third app introduced several subjects associated with the more technical and practical aspects of app development. This included data persistence, or retention of app states so that it may be re-created on subsequent usages of the app, error handling, and asynchronous processing.

Soon, I’ll be applying what I’ve learned from the CS193p course towards making improvements to Mobile Multibody Dynamics. That’s been on the table a bit over the last few months as I’ve spent more time with YouKon, but I still consider MOMDYN to be my “flagship,” or at least the app that best represents myself professionally.

Other Assorted Happenings Around País Vasco

While Rachel generally has the hiking and photography posts covered, I also take a picture or two now and then, and put a few into the gallery below to summarize our recent highlights.

• Bakio – a small pueblo along the coast, about an hour northeast of Bilbao. A short hike (~1.5 hours) from Bakio is the hermitage at San Juan de Gaztelugatze, a site that dates back to the 10th century that is now famous as Dragonstone from Game of Thrones.
• Parque Etxebarria – only about a 5-10 minute walk up the stairs from Plaza Unamuno along the Calzadas de Mallona, we spend many evenings here looking down on the city from the park on the hill.
• Getxo – a prominent suburb of Bilbao, and the most accessible beach using the public transport system. We frequent Playa Ereaga, namesake of our favorite bar in our neighborhood, and Algorta, which is a trendy neighborhood just up the hill.
• Lekeitio – another gorgeous seaside pueblo, with a fishing port, and the tiny Island of San Nicolás in the center of the bay. We spent our 10th wedding anniversary here over the weekend, and the ambience around the town was preciosa.

Wrapping-Up

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve reached a conclusion (perhaps temporarily) in my studies of the Spanish language, and in iOS development. This will free up more of our time to explore País Vasco, and work on some of my own projects. A bit of a hint of whats to come, I recently started a small freelance project. While I can’t say exactly what that is, I’ll say it bridges my personal interest in Formula 1 racing with my professional background in moving mechanical assemblies and aerodynamics. Stay tuned for more posts about our travels in Bizkaia, and engineering projects to come.