I kind of feel obliged to say hello, having received so many great emails from Aran. I signed up for the course because although I learned Spanish at school in Northern Ireland over 40 years ago and have lived in Andalucia ‘desde hace aproximadamente tres años’, my communication skills in the language were sorely lacking. However, I am pleased to report that even after only 7 challenges, I am experiencing an improvement and am excited by the prospect of continuing (without the pause button!). I have also switched my Fb page over to Spanish, something I did not realise I could do and I am addicted to collecting points on memrise.com, so thanks for that tip too Aran. It is helping me improve my written as well as verbal skills and I like the fact that I don’t have to use Usted. That is not a complaint about your course though as it is good to learn to use both. My only moan is that I have to switch your speakers in my head to castellano and all their sssss sounds are like pesky moscas to me sometimes! On the whole though, an excellent course, which I am thoroughly enjoying - especially as I am stuck indoors a lot this summer - we are experiencing a heat wave like never before! So thank you to everybody involved. I will recommend it.
Hasta luego,
Emily
P.S. I like the Welsh accent too - our family has a business in Cardiff!
Sounds like you are progressing well!
I too am struggling with the Latin American version on SSiS - I need to learn castellano and not LA as well!
Any advice on how to change it to castellano? I have been dropping the usted and then changing the verb to the ‘tú’ form but I’m not entitely sure thats correct half the time and it is adding extra (un-needed) pressure and getting very complicated now I’m on challenge 14!
You mentioned that you were “switching it in your head”, how exactly are you doing that?
Any top tips always welcome from a fellow heatwave sufferer 
Hi Clare,
So glad you spell it that way! My daughter’s middle name. Nice to hear from you. Whereabouts are you in this heatwave?
To try and answer your question, I am not bothering with the tu version on SSiS as I am practising using it on memrise. So I just keep to using Usted. That helps with he and she anyway. However, when I speak I drop all the sssss sounds because Castellan is much softer as you know. z is th, as are most c’s - for instance I say "dethir, not “dessir” for decir! Sorry I do not know the phoentic language - another one I should learn!
Back to lessons, hasta luego!
I love seeing emotional blackmail working so well…
A very warm welcome to the forum, and it’s great to hear that you’re off to such an excellent start! 
One of these days, we’ll have the option to choose whatever accent you’d like - but we need to figure out a way to get a bit more cash coming in before we’ll be able to do that, sadly… we’ll get there, though, I promise! 
In the meantime, @Clare - don’t worry too much about the accent - you’ll be understood fine whichever way you go, and you’ll naturally pick up the accent of whoever you spend the most time talking to, so you’ll go all the-the-the in no time