this one's for AMELIA!

Buenos noches buenos amigos! It’s pretty late here, but I’m not quite tired enough to go to sleep. I should probably make myself because we have to be on the bus tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. EN PUNTO (on the dot) lista para a fun-filled day in Punta del Este! (if you don’t know what “lista para” means, you should probably go back and read the title of our blog page). I’m not sure where the period goes after that sentence. Perhaps I shouldn’t have put the parentheses around it. But “to each his own,” and this is my own.

We (Zanessa, Stefanie L, Jess, y yo) just got back from having dinner with one of our friends we climb with at the YMCA. It was a little awkward at first because anytime you don’t really know someone and you go to dinner with them there is the potential for some awkward moments, but add in the no-speaky-the-same-language factor and you can multiply the awkwardness by like…10 or something. Anyway, to my surprise (and to my liking) it did not take long for us all to be chatting away with our friend Mauro. He warmed up to us too and eventually let us in on the secret that he knew much more English than he had let on.

I could go on, but I came to the ol’ laptop today with a topic on my mind. I want to write about STUDYING abroad. Well, really I just want to talk about 1 of my classes the first of which is my Spanish class. We have this class 8 hours a week (some weeks we will only have 6 because of weekend travels) and we also have an hour of Spanish lab 3 days a week. The labs are groups of about 3 or 4 students with a Uruguayan lab instructor and basically all we do is practice conversing in Spanish. The labs are helpful, but we are only going to have lab for about another month because by then they figure we will have some Uruguayan friends to practice speaking with. Guess what- we already do! And it’s my favorite way to learn. But it’s also the most frustrating way to learn because some of us (cough.me.cough) have a LONG way to go in being conversational in Spanish.

Ok, back to Spanish class. This is BY FAR the best language class I have EVER been a part of. I took Spanish in high school, but it was nothing like this. We have the sweetest little professor, Amelia, and she is from Uruguay. In fact, precious Amelia taught the last U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay. [That little factoid was free. Next time I’ll charge two chocolate bars: one milk chocolate for my precious little compañero de cuarto (roommate) Jessalyn and one dark chocolate for yours truly.] I really don’t even know how to explain what Amelia does differently, except to say she teaches us to speak Spanish. I think the difference is, in high school we learn how to write and how to read and so we think when we make an A on our tests we are on our way to being the next ambassador to Mexico, when en realidad (actually) we know rules that are seldom useful when trying to comprehend and speak Spanish. Oh my! I just realized the difference between this and any other language class…

Okay, when I learned English I was a baby. That’s all, thank you!

Joke. My point is, I learned English by hearing my parents, repeating them, and getting corrected. That’s how you learn a language. The sweet thing about being a baby is you have no concept of feeling dumb for pronouncing something wrong or feeling silly for using a word in the wrong way. That’s what Amelia and our lab instructors are trying to get us to do- speak without worrying so much about the technicalities. They want us to be able to understand and convey our message to people when we are outside of Casa ACU, even if we say it wrong. For example if I say “I need a stamp for to mail your letter,” the vendor at the store will know we need a stamp for a letter. And even if that person does not correct me, someone will. And it’s so true! When I talk to our friends from church, they correct my Spanish and I correct their English. Sometimes we laugh at each other and we don’t always correct everything, but we both want to learn, so we help each other out. Yo creo que (I think that) Amelia is the most encouraging and patient teacher I’ve ever had. Also, I’m pretty sure she wants me to learn Spanish more than I want me to learn Spanish. Ok- that’s not entirely true, but you get the point. She’s not here to help me achieve my 4.0 GPA; she’s here to help me learn something that can’t necessarily be assessed by a grade.

All this makes it sound like I’m on cloud nine for all 11 hours a week I am in some form of a Spanish class. Let me go ahead and set the record straight- this is not the case, buenos amigos. Many of those days, I start to wear thin and sometimes I think my mind is going to explode. Some days I feel like if I have to translate one more word it will undoubtedly exude from my body in the form of flames coming out of my nostrils. And let’s be honest- MOST days I don’t feel like getting out of bed for my early morning Spanish classes. BUT- I have counted the cost…and it’s worth it. I am learning Spanish. I am trying hard to just speak without worrying too much if I get the sentences exactly right. This is my attempt to return to babyhood. And so far, it’s working.

Longing for Punta del Este,

~Kara Dawn