digamos. sabes? viste? o sea. mira vos! ojo! no cierto.
last month, a mexican confused me for another mexican (something that happens often at home because of my skin color but certainly is not a common occurrence here) because of my accent and my vocabulary. last week, a brazilian confused me for an argentine. because of my vocabulary and the way i speak. and then again last night, by an argentine himself!
mira vos! (look at you!)
i kind of know for a fact that if the conversation had continued, they would have figured out pretty much immediately that i was very much a gringa foreigner. but in those precious minutes, i kind of felt like i was on top of the world (:
in the past few weeks, though i haven't been blogging, i've been doing a lot of writing. a whole heck of a lot of writing. and i realized that in coming here, i was running away from a lot of things back home but i was also running towards a time that i could use just for me, doing things just for me, things that make me happy without worrying [well, trying not to worry at least] about how this time will play into my future. at the top of that list was to learn a language that i'm absolutely in love with.
and after nearly four months here, to hear that i "manejo la lengua muy bien" [use the language well] makes my heart soar hehe.
of course, there are still a ton of things i need to learn. at the top of the list is vocabulary. i'm currently reading harry potter and the philospher's stone in spanish and even with a book i practically know by heart, i have to keep my handy dictionary by my side. even though it's slow reading, and at times incredibly frustrating, i keep trying to remind myself that it will all be worth it when one day, far far in the future, i can say i'm fluent in spanish. one day...
as the day for me to come home comes closer and closer [only 50 days left!] though, i'm starting to wonder if i'll have opportunities [and even more, if i'll take advantage of them] to use the language there. language is a fickle thing, indeed. and if you don't use it, you lose it. after all the work i've put in, i most certainly don't want to lose it. and i've also come to see that 6 months simply isn't enough to truly become fluent in a language. so this project i've embarked on - one of the few i'm doing purely for my own pleasure - will be a work-in-progress for the foreseeable future.
help me get there? (:
No comments:
Post a Comment