4 weeks into Living my Dreams
Fifteen more minutes. After dragging my phone into bed, my eyes remain closed a bit over the prescribed amount of time I’ve allotted for myself. Nothing is unusual as I shake off the remnants of drowsiness. The shower water doesn’t feel any different as I wade underneath its warmth. Even as I brush my teeth with the same toothbrush I’ve been using for well over a year do I have a, “Oh shit, I’m going to be late” moment as I head out the door. A day like any other in Mexico.
My Spanish class is always located at coffee shops around the neighborhood. As I arrive, I wave to my five classmates at a table and head to the counter to order a drink. As I’m thinking through what coffee I’d like, the barista looks at me ready to take my order. Words, full-blown Spanish words, spew out of my mouth. And suddenly... I’m fluent. Like the Matrix, I’ve finally downloaded the right software, and I can say in a flat Keanu Reeves voice, “I know Spanish.” With no effort at all, I make a joke – again in Spanish with beautiful grammar the gods would sing about. The barista laughs. Everyone behind the counter laughs. The entire restaurant laughs, and that’s when I awake from my dream.
What does it take to think in Spanish? This is the question I’ve been wrestling with every day for the past four weeks in Mexico. My theory is if I can think in Spanish, where my thoughts are encased in the language, then I’ll be able to start speaking like a local. Once I pass this threshold, I will finally be able to honor my Mexican ancestors. But how do I get there is the question – from thinking completely in English to Spanish?
I started practically learning Spanish since birth. My dad and my grandparents speak Spanish along with a majority of various aunts and uncles. The power of osmosis works well with water, but when language is involved it’s no so easily transferable. My environment, I estimate, was 95% English and 5% Spanish throughout my life. Just enough to feel the need to learn Spanish.
I bought my first Spanish learning software when I was around 10 years old. It was a CD-ROM that I had to put onto a tray that jutted out from the massive towers that are all but relics of the past. Somehow I found it online or maybe through a magazine ad. Anyway, it was a while ago. The method of this software was to have pictures from English associated with words from Spanish such as a monkey writing a monocycle because “mono” means monkey in Spanish. This is the sole example I can remember from this program. Clearly, I didn’t obtain fluency.
Since then I’ve tried lots of Spanish diets with all their various methods. Rosetta Stone diet. Duolingo diet. Three years of high school. They get me partially on my way to the six-pack Spanish abs I’ve always dreamed of but once I stop, I go right back to my flabby basic Spanish. And so I decided to go to a boot camp in another country where I can exercise and strengthen my language abilities the way one might at say The Biggest Loser – an extreme change in environment.
In the numerous books I’ve read on learning languages the end-all-be-all is to go abroad to the country where the language you want to learn is spoken. You can learn it in three months they say. But they talk less about the difficulties. I should have known the osmosis trick wouldn't work with a snap. For someone who’s worked in sales, I get similar feelings of running through brick walls of rejection except not from any potential prospects, but my own expectations.
So here is the actual multi-step process of my Spanish conversations. I hear the Spanish. (Hopefully I heard I didn’t miss anything.) I translate it to English. (Hopefully I translate it with the accuracy of a dictionary.) I come up with a response in English. (Hopefully my response is something I can say in Spanish.) I translate it back into Spanish. (Hopefully it’s translated with the right verb conjugation) I say the words in Spanish. (Hopefully I pronounce with considerable speed and flow.) I do all of this as my oppon… my speaking partner is waiting with that look of concentration as I struggle with the word for “hit.” (It happened yesterday.) This happens all for just one exchange where in any given day there’s probably a thousand. So rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. Day in, day out. This is my reality.
This reality doesn’t contradict my above dream. Because in reality, I’m living my dream – a dream of being in Mexico to learn Spanish. But living a dream doesn’t mean there isn’t hardships involved or that I can permanently swing in hammock on an island. In fact there’s actually more work involved than working at a job I disliked. Doing difficult things requires a dose of medicine that you won’t always be succeeding. But at least you’re in the arena trying, I suppose.
Sometimes you have to chase a dream to shatter your expectations, unlearn a few things, and defeat some dragons. This is Zach Esparza at about four weeks into my Spanish abroad adventure, and it feels like a slog. Something inside me laughs and the dream continues.
