Ich kann hablar en several languages

Since I´ll be on retreat in Colonia Valdense next Monday, this entry is next week´s entry served up a little early. I´ve been thinking a lot this week about language and the process (and, at times, struggle) I´ve been through over the past two months or so. When I first got here, I frankly overrated my ability to recall immediately and without trouble my six years of Spanish classes; I figured after a week or two, once I got used to the new accent, I´d be cooking with gas and chattering away.

Not so much. The first month was linguistic torture, and I am only slightly exaggerating in calling La Obra my personal foreign language Abu-Ghraib. It was a scenario practically designed to be about 10 fathoms over my Spanish-speaking head - kids who don´t all get that I don´t speak Spanish like a native speaker, adults who like to make constant jokes and talk very rapidly, teaching teens English and having to explain the idiosyncracies of my crazy native language while not grasping all the idiosyncracies of THEIR crazy native language, and so on. Pair that up with the church´s free-for-all Bible study conversations and a generous amount of conversation with new friends, and you can understand why I literally had a headache at the end of every day for my first two weeks.

I was, quite frankly, disappointed in and depressed over, my level of Spanish. I even considered, for at least a few days, looking into classes. Even once or twice I caught the little voice in my head saying that I should have lied, or been more modest (take your pick) on my YAGM app, listed my Spanish as tourist-level, and consequently been sent somewhere non-Spanish speaking for the year. I started reading my Greek New Testament every day, if just to remind myself that at least I had one language other than English under my belt.

And then, sometime in the first week or so of October, it happened. That week, Dorothea had started to teach me a little German, and the headaches had been gone for a week or so. I went to bed, and I started to dream....but not in English. My dream was in SPANISH, with the exception of a few sentences in English, and a very memorabl sentence or two in German. I had a trilingual dream. When I woke up, I just started laughing.

That was the event I needed to spur me on. Once the battle in my sub-conscious was won by the forces of castellano, the war´s end was at hand. I felt encouraged that I COULD learn to speak Spanish (and German, too, evidently), and that confidence helped me begin to break out of my linguistic shell. Conversations suddenly began to happen with frequency and with fewer awkward pauses while I tried to think of a response. I kept on dreaming in a delightful mix of languages, and now it´s almost exclusively en español. I bought a little book to write new words in to help me increase my vocabulary.

Then, I broke down and did the smartest thing I´ve done in two months. Every morning, I like to read my Bible before heading out to work, and on the bus, I typically take advantage of the 30 minutes or so of sitting still and not having things to do and make it my main prayer time of the day. I had been doing it in English, but then the thought came to me - "why not do it in Spanish?" So, one day, I did. That day, I had markedly less trouble with my Spanish. I did it again the next day, with the same basic results. I kept it up, and after a week realized that I was, on the whole, thinking in Spanish rather than English.

Now, over the past few weeks, it´s gotten to the point that English words sound, and feel, weird to me when they come out of my mouth, and I actually prefer to go through the day without using English. I´m not exactly soaring in my Spanish, but it´s better than it was and is getting better everyday. My German, too, is growing (slowly), and I´m getting the hang of biblical Hebrew in my spare time. This year, the church season´s name has been particularly apt - it really HAS been Pentecost.