school

i don´t know how immigrants do it - pack up their bags and head to a foreign country without having the resources to take classes in the new language. knowing how i feel now, i must admire their courage. i have been here for a week, living with Pilar who is kind enough to chat with me in basic Spanish, taking six hours of language each day, followed by an hour of studying in the evening whilst watching Spanish TV. basically, the entire two weeks i´m in Madrid i´m focused on studying. i´m making a teeensy bit of progress. i still can´t understand conversations in the street, but i had a nice chat with Pilar about laundry and cooking.

i have no idea how anyone would approach this without having time or money to study. i´m constantly overwhelmed, and almost had a breakdown on thursday just because i hadn´t spoken or heard english for 36 hours. it is isolating and overwhelming. but fantastic at the same time.

my school =elemadrid= is reputed to be one of the best in spain. right now i only have one other person in my class, maddalena, from italy, so it is very nearly one-on-one instruction. the other day our profesora was chatting about something and a word came up that neither maddalena or i knew. maddalena whipped out her dictionary and said "ah, si, si!" she leaned over to show me the entry, and i glanced at the definition. in italian. the spagnolo a italiano dictionary isn´t that much help to me.

on wednesday i found out that i am not the very worst spanish speaker in the country during our group lunch with 11 students and two teachers. Judy from Colorado speaks spanish like Napoleon Dynamite´s grandma and Sarah from Australia put a hilarious spin on the spanish accent. it´s nice not not to completely suck, but my tongue is tied in knots every time i try to conjure up a complete sentence. nearly every madrileño thinks i have learning disabilities and just talks to me in really slow english or loud spanish.

speaking of english, being in spain is a constant reminder of how monolingual the united states really is. did you know that the U.S. has 55 million spanish-speakers, the second highest number in the world after mexico? we have 20 million more spanish-speakers than spain, and i only know three or four non-latino people who are fluent in spanish. i know that it is mostly a product of our size and the relative socioeconomic relationship between us and our southern neighbors, but i still find it interesting. most of my classmates are already at least bi-lingual (spanish being their third, fourth, or even fifth lanugage). Suzanna, from germany, is fluent in german, english, and french. She is nearly fluent in spanish and italian, and she can "get by" in Japanese and Flemish. Maddalena speaks italian, german, and english. i am painfully jealous.

every day when i am told or overhear something and my brain approaches internal combustion temperatures as i work to decode, i feel a huge sense of victory if i can understand just one word. it is like a glimpse of a world that i am not yet invited into. i am here feeling somewhat isolated and awed by the language skills of my european classmates, but suddenly something will make sense. something with go from jumble to understanding, and i feel door between me and that other world open just a little bit wider.