Hola, yo me llamo Samuel.

When I arrived in Nicaragua, I thought by the end of training I’d have the language down no problem. The thought process was, “How could it take that long?” Well, I know why now – there’s just so much content, it’s almost impossible to decide where to start, or what to focus on. Every where you turn in the language, you run into a problem between tenses, vocab, grammar, and everything in between. I can’t even name all the tenses in English, how am I expected to learn the 14 of Spanish. Am I right? There has just been so much more to learning a language than I realized. What’s interesting, is that when you forget a word or verb, you start thinking about other ways to say a sentence, and I’ve been surprised at how many different ways I’ve been able to say the same thing in my head. Every time you talk in a new setting is a small little puzzle, because I have to figure out how to get my point across using my limited knowledge of the language. I now apologize to any of the study abroad students I criticized, who didn’t learn the native language. Three months is not bastante time to learn a language.

            What’s been super humbling about the whole experience, and the toughest to deal with is that by not being able to talk, it’s almost like you’re losing a piece of your personality. After that’s been taken away from me, I’ve learned how much my mannerism, sayings, and slang has been a part of me, a part of personality. It’s been as much a part of me as my attitude, the clothes I wear, and the people I hang out with. So when that goes, so does a little piece of you, as depressing as that is to say. Because right now, I’m speaking very formal, simple Spanish, since I don’t have a mastery over the language yet, and it’s tough to form a bond with people when you can’t truly be yourself. I’ve been able to make friends while here in the Villa, but I feel like there is so much more out there once I really understand everything going on. Everyone just speaks so fast. The up and up is that right now I feel like I’m on some sort of threshold of breaking through, as it seems like I’m picking up more and more everyday. But this whole game of learning a language has really been a roller coaster, so I imagine even this week I’ll be thinking the exact opposite.

            So to clarify, things are tough, but I expected that. As tough as this has been, I realize I probably got it pretty good since I don’t have to learn Chinese or Arabic, and the learning curve is a bit faster. So the language will come, and with that comes bigger and better things.