Yo queiro aprender Español

I'm trying to come up with a plan to learn Spanish. I have always wanted to be able to fluently speak Spanish but unfortunately they haven´t invented a Spanish chip I can implant in my brain and I've married into a Spanish speaking family so I need to get serious about learning. In the words of Nike I need to ¨Just Do It¨. I took 2 years of Spanish in High School and a quarter or 2 in college but that was a while ago. I know enough to listen to a conversation or read something and understand the general idea of what is being said. I know a lot of nouns but I am horrible with my verbs which makes me really hesitant to try and speak it. I'm learning to get over this especially after how thankful I was in Chile when people tried to speak English to me. I didn't care how bad the grammar was and paid no attention to it. I was just happy they were trying to communicate with me.

S bought me the entire Rosetta Stone collection for Spanish. Does anyone have experience with Rosetta Stone? I'm still on the first level and I know that the premise is learning through immersion but I'm starting to wonder how people with no background in Spanish learn this way and wondering how much I am learning. 95% of this first level has been very easy for me so far and very boring but still something I have to go through. One thing I'm realizing more now than I had before when studying Spanish is that you need to think in the other language instead of trying to translate from your native language. I think the Rosetta Stone method does help with this.

Everyone thinks that S is too easy on me because he doesn't force me to learn it. I think he would really like it if I could speak but he doesn't push me at all. Some people have said that we need to have entire periods of time that are solamente Español. That would be a fun weekend of us either staring at each other or me answering questions ¨si" o ¨no". I've talked to S about him mixing in some Spanish into our everyday conversations. I think this might be the better option for him to mix English and Spanish and maybe I'll start to pick some up. I know the last time I was in Chile for 2 weeks I really started to pick up more and my ear was becoming more tuned to it. I know that the best way/only way to really learn a language is to spend a good amount of time there but I don't have that option right now.

So, I need a plan.....I'm trying to decide how many times a week and how long I should be studying. I've read that shorter amounts of time more often are better than spending long amounts of time. If you have any input or tips for learning a language, how much time should I be devoting to studying, types of studying, things that helped you etc. PLEASE let me know :). GRACIAS!!