Hi internet,
I'd like to thank you for reminding me that I hardly follow through with the things I start. Take this blog for example... it's been a while and I did not keep it up in the least.
No importa. I am now home: safe, sound, and enjoying my month of summer. One more week and I'll have been home one day short of a month. One month to swallow the culture shock, or maybe to soak in it.. I've been nodding yes to a lot of "so, you liked it?"s and shaking my head no to many "and you're fluent now?"s. I think one of the main truths we learned was how distant fluency lingers out of reach. It is like Venus in that I can see it when my sky is quiet, but I highly doubt that the lovely planet will concern herself with me. However, more positively, I am very pleased with my improvements! I can now say with confidence that I speak Castellano and understand Spanish. Before leaving I would not have had the audacity or ignorance to claim so high. For me this means that I can say and explain whatever I'd like, and for the most part be understood. It's just that instead of saying things like "she's got curly hair" I say "she has hair like this *curly finger motions*" with a sheep's face pulled over mine.
In my first few months in BsAs I couldn't imagine missing those strange sounds forced uncomfortably from my mouth. They left me with a stiff jaw, disappointed ears, and burning eyes. Frustration, in a word. In fact, last night while sleeping an hour with my sister before driving her to the bus station at 2 in the morning, I was reminded of the feeling. We'd left the music on and, disrupted in my sleep, I began speaking my dream aloud into the waking world. As in I was trying to talk. Sleep talkers, maybe you're practiced enough to execute with ease, but for those of you occasionals like me, you know the struggle of forming words with a dead-mouth. Some was in Spanish, some in English, but the point is that's how it feels to shift a second language into first gear and drive on the highway with it.
Sin embargo, since I've been home, I've been yearning to hear and speak Spanish. My friends from the program and I text and chat in Spanish, I skype with my Argentine friends when I can, email my host mom, walk across Portland to La Bodega Latina to buy a gaseosa and yerba mate, and interrupt any tourist with a Spanish tongue to ask where they're from.
I've also been driving everyone nuts I'm sure, talking only of the past 5 months.. but there's just so much! And besides, what else are friends and family for? They have to listen.
PS. here's some summer music in case you need some surf in your brain: Best Coast / Beat Connection / Local Natives / Surfer Blood / The Drums / Washed Out / Talk Talk / Future Islands / Devendra Banhart / The Notwist
