coming back

Unfortunately, it didn't work out for me to complete my final week of teaching this week. I got sick with a cold this weekend and it turned into stomach issues (surprise!). I went back to the doctor on Monday (visit #5) and he said that my stomach issues were related to my cold. I decided to cut the week short, come home, and get better.

You go on trips like this for an adventure, and sometimes you get one that you hadn't planned: the perpetual stomach issues, the Tropical Storm Agatha, two nights sleeping on a hospital floor, an erupting volcano, giant inexplicable holes in the capital city, and a sizable earthquake that woke me up the other night.

Mostly, I was sick for most of this and it made everything difficult and frustrating. I was only able to teach for 2 weeks out of a possible 5. However, I learned a lot from those two weeks and from the totality of the experience itself.

Right now, I'm thinking about how my Spanish has grown. It's hard to quantify, really. But, I've noticed a difference in my confidence as a speaker. I saw this video, earlier this year, by Amy Walker, who is an expert at speaking in different accents. She says that, in order to really get an accent down, you have to be "fascinated by it," to love the melody of it and really appreciate and delight in the idiosyncratic sounds of the language. I tried to do this mostly by active listening and by watching Spanish television and listening to Spanish music.

This week, I noticed that, when interacting with different people (pharmacists, tour guides, waiters, clerks, etc.) I was confident and relaxed. I knew that I would understand them AND be understood. I can't say I had the same confidence at the end of my experience last time. Although I felt capable of communicating clearly, I had to sort of psyche myself up and prepare my brain to speak Spanish and listen closely. I didn't have to consciously think about it this time, I just knew. I knew all the words necessary to get my point across in any situation and I also had fine-tuned my hearing to pick up what people were saying.

This is a huge difference and perhaps a significant threshold that any language learner enters. For example, when a young reader starts to feel confident reading aloud, a huge shift happens internally. The task of reading changes from being a struggle and a sweat to being a diversion and a vehicle for exploration. I feel excited to be entering into this new category, but I also am aware of how much more I have to go.