Portuguese so far

Our Portuguese school - 'Fast Forward'

Ok, yeah, the grammar can be a bit finicky - I'm not used to conjugating verbs etc, but it's not horrific.  After a few times you get it - I can conjugate 'to go' off the top of my head right now:
Eu vou
Ele/Ela/Voce vai
Nos vamos
Eles/Elas/Voces vao

Once you know the order of conjugation you just go through the list in your head - there's only four conjugations, even for irregular verbs (so far, anyway - maybe I'll have to eat my words later).

But listen, people: I studied German in secondary school, OK?  GERMAN.  There are 16 different ways of saying 'the' in German.  I'm not kidding.  So thus far, for me, Portuguese is a breeze.

The main problem I'm having is forcing myself to use Portuguese in real life situations.  Although I understand the grammar and I've gained a fair amount of vocabulary in my lessons, my brain freezes up when I actually need to use the language.  It's getting better, I'm talking in bits, but I've yet to vocalise an entire sentence without a bit of help outside of the classroom.  Considering I've only done 4 days of 4-hour classes, I think I'm doing alright.

At least I'm not as bad as my Mum: we were walking down Avenida Paulista yesterday evening with the dog, my Mum asked me "how do you say 'I don't speak Portuguese' again?" "You say 'Eu nao fala Portugues'," I replied.  "Ok, got it," she said.  About 30 seconds later, while waiting for the lights to change at a crossing, someone asked her in Portuguese for what sounded like directions and she immediately responded "Je ne parlais Francais".  We both burst into a fit of giggles.