Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks – Learning Spanish

Today I started my first in-class weekly Spanish lesson.  The class had 20 students, all of them younger than me and most by more than a generation.  I was the only one who had never taken a lesson in Spanish or traveled to a Spanish-speaking country.  The pace was quick, but the instructor, Carlos, repeated everything in such a clear voice I could hear his enunciation without a problem.  I couldn’t always repeat it properly, but I tried my best.  the amount of vocabulary he covered in two hours was mind-warping.

By the time 2 hours had passed we had covered introductions, asking for and giving addresses, adding and subtracting up to 100, the sounds of the vowels and the alphabet.  Whew!

Then he had us take turns being characters reading dialogue from a script.  There were times I felt tense, but I’d much rather learn in a classroom than become flustered on a foreign street.  I wonder if there is any way to make this learning easier?  Any suggestions from those who have been there?