WanderingWhy…

Learning a language is difficult. I think the people who complain the loudest about foreigners not speaking English in America secretly know this and fear the pain of learning another language. Yes, I agree if you live in the United States you need to learn English–period.

But would it hurt our monolingual culture to learn some Spanish? I don’t think it is a “threat to our culture” by doing so… a threat to our ignorance maybe. In case these folks haven’t noticed—there is more than an entire continent in the backyard of our wonderful country that speaks Spanish (minus Brazil).

Honestly I have always wanted to learn another language. As a kid, when I overheard a conversation in another language it seemed an exotic, magical thing to me. How can they speak English and shift gears to explain themselves with all those strange sounds that no one else understands? It was like they knew some big secret. Unfortunately this curiosity was destroyed in junior high school with the boredom of the classroom. Textbooks can make the most fantastic subject lame—go open a sex ed text before you come argue this point.

I’ve met several Dutch and Flemish people in my limited travels who speak 4 to 6 different languages—and most of the them speak English better than I do. When someone like this asks “How many languages do you speak?” I cringe and want to reply “Half of one.” I am the typical monolingual American.

So, here we are in the middle of a Spanish speaking country with several more ahead of us. The entire trip so far has been in Spanish speaking countries—and I wish I could say I am now fluent in Spanish but no es verdad. I mentioned to Dawn at the beginning of the trip that I would love to take a week out and spend it in an intensive Spanish school. She balked at the idea and I understood. We have spent the last few years working our asses off to do this trip and the last place she wanted to spend our time was in Spanish school (especially since she took 5 years of Spanish over high school and college—I took one).

But as we keep traveling in these countries, I think we began to see how much more this trip would be enhanced with better Spanish. I had heard from other travelers that Ecuador is one of the best places to learn Spanish. Instruction is really cheap ($4 to $8 and hour for private instruction) and the Spanish here is clear and paced as an instructional tape.

Back when we arrived in Quito and I was laid out for a week sick as a dog, I saw the hostel we were staying at had a Spanish school right on the premises. Not being up for much else, I suggested it to Dawn again. She was so tired of laying around the hostel all week reading that learning Spanish with the Esposo sounded like fun. She signed us up for 3 days of instruction together.

That experience taught us that Sean is dead-weight. I was very happy just learning numbers so I’d have a clue as to how much I’m getting ripped off every time I pay a cabbie. Dawn decided that was boring and decided to ask about conjugation of verbs in the future and past tense. Conja-What? The instruction turned into a tornado and I was the little house—d-e-s-t-r-o-y-e-d. We are on totally different levels.

We wanted to see the Saturday market in Otavalo but it was only Monday. We did not want to spend another week in Quito wandering around Gringolandia, so we found a Spanish school in Otavalo and booked a homestay for the week to practice what we were learning. Only this time—we opted for one on one instruction.

We were not sure what to expect with the homestay. Honestly I was expecting to stay with and help out a poor family, dirt floors and the whole bit. Not the case at all. We were lodged in one of the oldest and most beautiful homes in Otavalo with a very, very nice family. It was a fantastic experience. We gave our adopted Abuela a plant and some cookies as a parting gift and she was all tears. Wonderful people.

I was looking forward to class. I’ve picked up quite a few words just playing around reading signs and asking questions, but I cannot construct a sentence to save my life due to my lack of verbs. I sound like Tarzan.

Jiu Jitsu, my other love, has always been a model for my life. Jiu Jitsu is more than the enjoyment of strangling your friends and cranking their joints in the wrong direction. I’m sorry if I bore my non-jiu-jitsu friends with these analogies, but with learning a language I really see it. Like jiu-jitsu, it looks (or sounds) easy until you try it—then you get your butt handed to you and your ego put in check by those that know it. At first you are struggling just to understand what is going on, then you start to understand the general framework. You practice and make many mistakes since this is the only way to get there—unfortunately this is where most people give up because it is very hard. But, if you keep at it you start to see where things belong and eventually you even start to do them at the right moment in time.

These classes were the ass kicking I was looking for. I wanted and didn’t want to go through them. Sometimes I thought maybe I should just try to learn to speak English first. For 4 hours every morning I sat straight across from my instructor (also the director) at a little table. There were no classmates to hide behind and I received questions to make me speak. I realized I wanted to chicken out and do exercises in the book, but I learned the funny thing is, if you want to speak a language—you have to speak it. Sometimes the corrections felt like electric shock treatment but it was probably my tired mind and bruised ego.

Seriously though, it was a good experience and even “fun”. I didn’t think I’d learned any Spanish on this trip but my instructor insisted I did. On the last day of class, it dawned on me that all of the classes were entirely in Spanish. Hmm.. how did I actually understand all those hours of instruction?

Maybe I’m starting to understand the framework–Now comes the hard painful part.

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