Decoding Unfamiliar Text

In 2007, I decided to take a huge leap of faith and move to Costa Rica with my then 6 year old daughter.  I had been there in 2006 and thought it would be fun to teach there.  So, I found a second grade position at a school called Golden Valley. 
I had "learned" Spanish in high school but it had been 14 years since I had graduated so you could say I was a little rusty.  I certainly couldn't read or write in Spanish.  So there I was a second language learner teaching a group of students who were also second language learners...we were quite a team!
During the first few weeks my daughter and I lived with another teacher who was a Spanish only speaker.  We both spent a great deal of time acting out what we wanted or needed.  I spent a lot of time in my Spanish-English dictionary searching for words that might be helpful.  But, since we were both in the early stages of our language development we spent a lot of our time together silent.
Living in a new country where I didn't know the language was overwhelming.  The most valuable instruction at the onset was in environmental print.  I found simple signs, like stop and for the bathroom, easy to figure out and slowly my second language began to develop.  Fortunately, I made a few bilingual friends and was an eager student (I mean my life kinda depended on learning the language).  This made life a bit easier.  I recall a silent period where I absorbed a lot of new words.  After a few months I began attempting to read longer passages in Spanish, I would then try to translate them into English without the help of my dictionary.  I found this to provided great humor for my bilingual friends when they read the translation, usually I was way off! 
After a several months I was able to speak fluently in Spanish and my reading and writing were definitely coming along.  I was beginning to communicate to my students parents via a communication notebook though I still relied on my "editors"  for helping me to properly conjugate verbs! 
I can honestly say my year in Costa Rica was an amazing learning opportunity.  I have been back for 3 years and am still fairly fluent speaking Spanish though without much opportunity to practice I have lost a great deal of my writing abilities.  The greatest gift I received in that experience was the ability to empathize with my future ELL students.  I truly know the fears, frustrations and joys of learning a new language, in a new place!