Back at It

Another shot of the beautiful patio where my class is

Yesterday was a very bad Spanish day. It was like everything I knew disappeared from my head and I couldn't say anything. I went to class and it was a really long hour. My teacher didn't know what had happened to me, and the fact that she noticed only made it worse. Not only could I not remember any vocab or grammar, but it was like I had lost the ability to talk, too. My tongue just got in the way in my mouth and I couldn't pronounce anything right. It was depressing.

Truth be told, I'm not a person who is naturally gifted at languages. I lived in Costa Rica for three years and never really felt comfortable speaking Spanish, even though I muddled through. It just never felt natural to me and I also had a really hard time understanding people, which used to make me dread anyone's conversation attempt. I spoke okay Spanish when I left there, but I wasn't fluent. Looking back, I know I made all the classic language learning mistakes-- I worried too much about saying things perfectly, I was shy about making Spanish-speaking friends, and I lived alone. Plus, I taught English, so my day-to-day life was spent speaking my own language to my students and my teacher friends. Needless to say, that didn't work.

School entrance

This time around, I'm doing things differently. It's definitely still not easy for me, but this time I'm avoiding English speakers, I'm living in a shared house where I have to interact with Spanish speakers (eek!), and I'm taking classes every day. Maybe I'm not making friends (that's a lot to ask of me) but I'm trying to find more ways I can interact and practice, like doing an interchange with someone who's learning English, or even just going to a movie or reading a book. My teacher lent me a pretty thick novel called El Palacio de la Medianoche (The Midnight Palace). I was hesitant about it because it looks like it would be for someone more advanced, but I decided if she has faith in me I'll give it a try.

Days like yesterday sometimes come along and make me think I'll never learn this language, but today it all made a kind of nonsensical sense again. I'm back at it.

Money spent today
$15 Spanish book
Q35 heel things for my shoes (getting blisters)
Q10 2 large bottles of water (tap water doesn't really agree with me here)
Q10 1 papaya and 2 tomatoes
= about $22 USD