Idas y Vueltas

Reflections of an “Enfermita”

Hello, friends. Here I am.

It took a sprained ankle to get me to start the blog I’ve been meaning to write for months. I still think it’s a funny concept — publishing personal thoughts and experiences on the internet — but I can’t help but feel a little left out since more of my friends are doing it every day. Plus, I haven’t written more than an e-mail here and a journal entry there in English since before coming to Spain to work as a language assistant last September, and I miss putting together words and seeing them on paper. I haven’t even let myself read a single book in English these past seven months because I don’t have Spanish classes and reading novels in Spanish is how I keep the language in my head and advance in grammar and vocabulary.

But I’m going home in June, and on a shelf in my living room is a book I brought with me from the States, recommended by my mom, that I plan to begin while I’m waiting in the airport to get on that eight-hour flight back to Tennessee. No matter how well you understand a second language and how much of a language nerd you are (and I’m a big one), there’s just nothing like the ease of reading and expressing yourself in your own language. It’s something you can’t understand if you’ve never had to act out what it is you want at a store because you didn’t know how to ask for it, gone to your Spanish boyfriend’s family reunion and tried to not be awkward when you’re already kind of shy in English, or started to tell a story in front of a group of people and had to stop in the middle because you couldn’t get it together.

And it’s not just the act of speaking English itself that’s so great, it’s speaking with other native speakers. I spend 20 hours a week teaching English, which means I spend 20 hours a week abridging and dissecting everything I say so that people who are just starting to learn English will understand me. It’s as painful and exhausting as trying to speak a language you don’t know very well because you have to limit your vocabulary to just a few words, use gestures and pictures to illustrate what you’re trying to say and repeat yourself beyond slowly until they understand you.

That’s why when I was talking with Ann, from New Orleans, who came over to keep me company in my homebound state a couple nights ago,  I thought: tonight we’re the cool kids. She’s said, and I agree, that it’s easy to feel like the most boring kid at a party when the party’s happening in a foreign language and your jokes don’t quite translate or you miss your chance to participate in an interesting conversation because you take too long to work out what you want to say. I’m usually up for the challenge –after all, I deliberately put myself in these situations — but getting back to my language after a long week of Spanish immersion is like recharging my batteries.

These days I wince, run and hide when someone tries to practice their English with me when I’m off the clock, or I try to switch the conversation to Spanish. And I remember when I was studying here in Granada two years ago, I hated it when I started to speak to people in Spanish and they would respond in English. So I’m thankful I met a lot of people more patient than I am — probably because they weren’t foreign language teachers — who engaged in numerous slow, rocky conversations with me and helped me improve my speaking one friendly correction at a time.

I’m currently on my third day of being the enfermita who can’t leave the house, but it’s rainy, cold-looking and gray outside and I’m missing work. So I can’t say I’m in a bad spot. My ankle will heal and I will soon be able to read my English books, and before long I know I’ll miss hearing Spanish everywhere I go. But for now I’m glad to have a new outlet to keep a little English in my head, and I hope it’ll help me feel more connected to my far-away friends, as well. I mean, when I say I miss my language, I really just mean I miss you.