Soaking up the Español

Though I’ve always appreciated how lucky I am to be here, the first few weeks, I’d wake up in the morning and wonder how many more days were left until I went home. This feeling often went away once I had showered and eaten breakfast, but I’m happy to say that now when I wake up, I feel nothing but felizidad y alegría. Every morning I sit on the metro and think to myself I’m living in Spain! I love that I’m living in the middle of a big city and I love that I’m surrounded by Spanish. On our trip to Cologne, the other girls and I found ourselves actually missing Spain the way you would miss any home.

More than just getting used to Spain, I can feel my mind getting used to the Spanish. I’ve noticed myself actually thinking in Spanish as I walk down the street, and I don’t have to think as much when replying to people in Spanish. Typing these blog entries, believe it or not, is actually a little difficult, because I keep spelling everything wrong. In many instances, I’ve absentmindedly begun typing in Spanish before realizing you guys won’t understand me if I continue.

On one of the first days of class in January, my teacher Paz told us the mark of assimilation is when we begin dreaming in Spanish, which typically happens in early March. Well, one day about two weeks ago, I woke up and realized that I had in fact, been dreaming in Spanish. But before you marvel at my skills, understand that it was only because in my dream I was talking to Anastasia and Spanish is the only way she and I can communicate. In any case, it still felt pretty good.

I think my mark of assimilation came last week, while Allie and I were studying for final exams in my favorite café. We had just bought a freshly baked baguette, not because we were hungry but because they had just come out of the oven and their tantalizing aroma was impossible to ignore. We were talking about school and I wanted to say the word “attendance,” which in Spanish is asistencia. I opened my mouth to say the word, but all that came out was “as..” I paused for a moment and for the life of me could not remember the word in English. All that popped up in my brain was asistencia. Ultimately the word came to me, but never before had it taken me so long to find the English equivalent to a word.

(Also that evening while we were studying, a little boy on his way out of the café turned to look at us, a quizzical look on his face. His mother quietly whispered to him that we were speaking English. I don’t know, I thought it was cute).

Last night, a couple of friends and I saw the movie “Juno,” (dubbed in Spanish of course). I’ve found that dubbed things are the most difficult to understand, because the brain is accustomed to having what it sees match up with what it hears. Despite this, I was able to follow the movie without having to concentrate that much more that I would for an English movie. I’d still like to go back and see it in English, to understand the jokes I missed, but at least my six euros weren’t wasted.