There’s a reason that I’ve heard, “¡Tranquila!” and “No te preocupes” about 50 times each in the two weeks I’ve been in Spain. Being the nervous, worried person that I am, I’m always thinking about how I’m in Spain only 10 weeks (eight weeks now, not that I’m keeping count or anything), and how I can best spend my time here on UChicago’s quarter system. After my program ends, I will visit my best friend in England, but until then, I’ve made the decision not to travel outside of Spain on my long, three-day weekends (that’s right, I don’t have classes Fridays, and never before 11:30 a.m.!). During my trip to Ávila and Salmanaca, I ended speaking English with a lot of other students, and when I returned to my house, my host father asked me, “You spoke in English a lot, no?” Busted. I don’t want to undo each week’s worth of progress in a weekend in another non Spanish-speaking country. But then I remember how much it costs to travel to Europe—what if, with my anthro degree and interest in working in community service, I never make it back, or at least not until I’m much, much older? Retired, even? Or what if something horribly tragic happens, and I choke on one of those little pretzels on my flight on the way back to the US and die before I see France or Italy or Germany (when they’re so close to me right now in this very moment!), or anywhere else in the world for that matter?
When I turn my thoughts to travel within Spain, things get equally complicated. Spain is like a small continent, with so many different languages (catalán, español, gallego, vasco) and geographical features (mountains, beach, sea, plains, desert) to see and explore! Where to go? How to travel? Alone? With loads of other classmates? I’ve made a tentative list of places to travel, and I plan to go through CouchSurfing. Unfortunately, despite the Spanish-only contact we signed, a lot of students in the program speak English…the vast majority of the time. As my goal is to learn Spanish, I would like to travel with only a few other people, or by myself, while I’m in Spain, so I’ll be forced to talk in Spanish and make Spanish friends.
I think I’ve been doing well so far with the no-English rule. I have a little notebook filled with random translations and phrases (the most interesting tidbit on my current page: “Marzo ventoso y abril lluvioso hacen a mayo florido y hermoso,” which is the Spanish “April showers bring May flowers”), and I’ve been able to carry on conversations (albeit choppy and terribly grammatically incorrect conversations) with people. Still, I feel guilty even typing in English in my blog, when I could be working on reading Roald Dahl’s Matilda (borrowed from Carmen, naturally!) in Spanish or doing any number of things in Spanish. Sometimes, I wish that I were abroad in the time my mother studied in Spain, without Facebook, without my laptop filled with music in English, but now English has infiltrated Spain to such a large extent that it would be impossible for me not to hear it.
My hang-ups aside, I’ve definitely felt my Spanish improve these past two weeks. Still, I can’t help but feel as though I’m mercilessly slaughtering the Spanish language every time I open my mouth to speak. To be honest, it’s a little freeing—it’s nice to know that there are very roundabout ways of saying things with my limited vocabulary, and that, to be understood, I don’t have to follow every single grammatical rule like in my Spanish classes in the US. Obviously, I want to have the rules (mostly) under my belt by the time I’ve completed my program, but until then, I suppose I should make like a Spaniard and be tranquila, and that I shouldn’t take anything for granted in the time I do have in this wonderful, beautiful country.
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