Communicating on a new level: Costa Mesa man, at 53, studies Spanish to converse with his fluent father

With the new year in full swing, those who’ve set personal goals for 2025 may want to take a page from the playbook of Costa Mesa resident Jason Wallis.

The 53-year-old professional photographer and father of two set a goal some months ago to become conversant in Spanish by the end of 2024, just in time for an annual family trip to New Zealand.

Wallis’ ambition had personal roots. His father William — now 88 years old and living in the city of Auckland, New Zealand — had been raised by a mother of Mexican heritage who’d known very little English when she’d met and married Wallis’ grandfather, an oil man, in Mexico.

The pair traveled the world together and lived in Venezuela for a time, with young William in tow. Although his father is able to speak Spanish fluently, Wallis had never learned enough of the language to carry on a conversation with him. So, he decided to do something about it.

Costa Mesa resident Nadia Flores began teaching Spanish and other subjects during the pandemic. Now, she is the owner of Viva Kids Learning and also teaches adults.

(Courtesy of Nadia Flores)

“I’ve felt like it’s part of my heritage, and I really should do it,” Wallis said in a thick New Zealand accent that bespeaks the many years he lived there before moving to the U.S. for a job at 25 and later marrying his wife, Christina who, like his father, is Mexican American.

“I thought if I could speak Spanish, it would be wonderful to try to communicate with my father in that way.”

With a little help from an AI application, Wallis roughly calculated how much Spanish he could acquire by the family’s December trip if he practiced one hour a day and then got to work.

Seeking some assistance in his goal, Wallis turned to Nadia Flores, a local resident who’d taken up tutoring kids after being laid off from her job with the Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce during the pandemic.

A native Spanish speaker from Guatemala, Flores is today the owner of Viva Kids Learning, where she teaches personalized language and math lessons primarily to elementary and secondary school students, as well as adults learning English as a second language.

Among the young clientele she took on during the pandemic were Wallis’ two sons. So, when he asked her for weekly Spanish lessons for himself, she happily obliged and even found a series of courses on YouTube called “LearnCraft Spanish,” which employs a grammar-first approach, for him to supplement the lessons.

“He’s so determined and motivated,” Flores said Tuesday. “He’d meet me once a week and then do five hours on his own studying Spanish through YouTube videos. It’s kind of been like this dream, this goal he came up with — that’s so cool.”

Speaking from New Zealand, Wallis estimated he has achieved about an 80% grasp on conversational Spanish, just a tiny bit behind the goal he’d set for himself this summer.

“I’ve got nothing to lose, so I try to talk to people in Spanish. And if I don’t know a word in Spanish, I’ll slip out an English word,” he said of his approach.

After finally having had conversations in Spanish with his father, albeit basic ones, Willis said it’s been amazing to see how, together, they are able to communicate on an entirely different level.

One day, while driving to the beach and scrambling to remember the word for “both,” he simply said “los dos,” thinking he was piecing it together and his father confirmed he’d gotten it right.

“That was kind of a cool moment, because he was comprehending what I was saying,” he recalled. “Even though he’s lived in New Zealand for 45 years, he still can speak Spanish.”

Learning a new language in his 50s isn’t the Costa Mesa resident’s first attempt at living outside his comfort zone. At 48, he decided to learn the martial art jujitsu, eventually earned his purple belt and joined a competitive team of mostly young men. It was a pivotal moment in his life.

“That made me understand you can learn and progress when you’re older,” he said. “I realized if I can do that, sure I can [apply] the same method in Spanish, where you just show up for an hour a day.”

Now, Wallis has a new aspiration — to become a fluent Spanish speaker in three years. Flores is confident that, with the same dedication, her pupil will surely meet that goal.

“Things that are worth it take time,” she said, recalling the added challenges many of her adult students endure learning a new language. “It takes a lot of work, a lot of commitment and tenacity. But if you want it, you can achieve it.”