Babel

Recently, we opened up the comedor for kids to use in the afternoons to study and do their homework. A boy came in yesterday and asked me to help him with his English assignment. He had to practice speaking and translate a conversation.

Now that I’ve been working to learn Spanish for 7 weeks, and spending a good deal of time translating things from English into Spanish, it was interesting and a bit comical to switch that process with this young man. When trying to speak with him, words shot out of my mouth haphazardly, of one language or another, or even a mix of the two. After a while, we came close to getting it right, and that was good enough for both of us.

I owe my previous language teachers an apology: Dr. Sella for high school Latin and Prof. Anderson for college Portuguese. I was not the ideal student in either of these classes. In fact, I could be uninterested and disruptive. I didn't learn much...I didn't really try to. Being here and learning Spanish has shown me that I can acquire a language. I just need to see it as useful and necessary. Latin and Portuguese don't really fit that bill.