Learning Spanish, poco a poco

Learning another language es un poco difícil. There is a wide range of Spanish levels in our group of volunteers, so making small talk when we all arrived wasn’t the easiest. There was A LOT of awkward silence for the first day or two. Very quickly, we exhausted the basic (and easy to ask in Spanish!) questions about family, age, nationality, and our jobs this year. Things started to improve once we got into orientation and had something else to talk about. Fortunately for me, everyone understands English mildly well so our volunteer coordinator, Erika (from Switzerland), would generally translate the essential stuff from Spanish to English after she talked. (I’m so impressed and jealous of all the Europeans’ multilingual-ness! I wish there was a better system for learning foreign languages in the States.)

At times, the Spanish can be very frustrating. I generally feel like I can understand the gist of almost everything, but it’s so much harder to talk on my own. (Lets just forget about the few times where the topic involved more exotic vocabulary or the person spoke quickly and my comprehension went out the window…) Expressing your personality is tough, and it’s hard to really get to know someone. I think most of the volunteers would reach a point in the day where we simply could not absorb any more Spanish. It’s tiring stuff, man. Thank goodness for body language and Erika’s translations! In the midst of all the brain-melting Spanish, there were definitely some funny moments too. For example, once during lunch the conversation actually got somewhat animated and at one point I was surrounded by three languages (English, Spanish, and German). My brain was overloaded with languages. Also, I had to laugh when I caught myself intensely concentrating to understand what Laurenz (a German) was saying in Spanish until I realized he was speaking German. Duh, Jess. Just because it doesn’t sound like English doesn’t mean it’s Spanish. :)

The old volunteers have told us they were all in the same position with Spanish when they arrived. It’s incredible to watch someone who didn’t speak any Spanish when she started converse fluently in it a year later. I definitely hope I’m lucky enough to have that happen to me too! If I’m in Guatemala for a year, I definitely sure as heck better master Spanish by the end of it or I'm going to be mad at myself. Now, when the old volunteers talk to us in Spanish and translate to English, they mix up the languages. (Ex: They do things como painting and drawing… They have to compartir everything…) The phrase the old volunteers use a lot is “poco a poco”, or “little by little”. Although I wish I could just learn everything right away, I know that poco a poco it will come. Hopefully in a few months, I’ll be mixing up my languages too!