On August 2nd, 2011 at 9:23 a.m. when we arrived in Managua, I spoke enough Spanish to be comfortable, but I was nowhere near fluent, nor even slightly conversational.  My four years of French and two years of Spanish gave me a solid understanding of how the romance language works, but with a gap of 15 years since my last foreign language class, my Spanish vocabulary was in abeyance and I was limited to speaking in only the present and future tenses.  I spoke like a three year old, overgeneralizing grammatical rules and using words at incorrect times and in funny ways.  I planned and practiced every sentence in advance.

After three months, I was acutely aware that immersing myself into a Spanish speaking culture was tiring.  The excitement of learning a new language diminished.  I woke up dreading the possibility that I would have to speak Spanish.  I wanted to visit with my neighbor but I didn’t want to think in Spanish for half an hour or longer.  Sometimes my mind was spinning so fast I could only sit down and do nothing.  Just existing was exhausting.  I was grateful to not be working in this country while adjusting, and I longed for an easy conversation with friends back home.

Some of my fatigue was a consequence of being new to the area.  I had no idea how or where to do anything.  I could find the beach because I could hear it and the golf course because we lived on it.  But each time I drove to the closest grocery store an hour away, I could feel Lady Luck steering me there.  If you had asked me for directions, I couldn’t tell you.  There were no street signs to memorize, just landmarks.  I was shocked at how much thought it took to do just about everything.

The local customs confused me.  When I asked a toothless elderly fellow on the side of the road for directions, he stuck his hand out waiting for payment.   But when a young cyclo-taxi graciously led me to the gas station in the pouring rain, he looked at me like I was mad when I tried to tip him.  I discovered it is customary to greet people in passing with “adios” instead of “hola,” and when driving, to acknowledge friends with a quick, “honk, honk.”  I was supposed to negotiate for better prices at the fruit stand, but I didn’t know what a fair price would be, let alone how to barter for one.  I resorted to asking how much individual items cost and once given the grand total, saying, “That’s expensive.”  This frequently resulted in them lowering the price by a dollar or two.  The reply to, “How are you?” often sounded like, “Bien, gracias, adios” (Well, thank you, goodbye).  I knew that didn’t make sense, but it took me awhile to realize they were actually saying “Bien, gracias a dios” (Well, thanks to God).

Most unexpected for me was adjusting my identity as an “American.”  Latin Americans also identify themselves as American.  They are North American, Central American, or South American, and it is perceived as righteous to declare ourselves as the only Americans.  So I became a Gringa from The States instead of an American.  I had wondered before how we Americans got to be “The Americans.”  But the perspective that others also call themselves Americans and that perceiving ourselves as The Americans could be interpreted as exclusionary never occurred to me.  I wondered what else about both my identity and my world perspective would be challenged in this new experience here.

Two and a half years later, when someone asks if I speak Spanish, I hesitate.  Eliana often replies before I can answer by saying, “Yes, she speaks a lot of Spanish,” because she knows I wrangle with the answer every time.  To Eliana, I am fluent, as I have been able to handle every situation that has come our way.  I, however, am more likely to explain that I’m comfortable but not yet fluent.  Truth be told, I still feel like I am somewhere around 3 years old, possibly approaching 4.  The locals tell me I speak Spanish well and they rarely guess I’m from The States, which I take as a compliment to my pronunciation.  As a teacher, however, I have scales of fluency and proficiency against which I’m judging myself.  I don’t know at what point I will finally get to say, “Yes, I speak Spanish,” and believe it.  There is just so much about a language to learn.

I see now why Chinatowns, Little Italys, and the like, pop up around the world.  It’s a lot harder to assimilate into a new culture and learn a new language than one might think. There are many moments of feeling alone, and being surrounded by others who also speak your native tongue is comforting.

I reflect on the hateful comments some US-born native English speakers make about English language learners, and I am thankful that that ignorant type of mentality doesn’t exist here.  I am grateful to be welcomed.  It takes awhile to thoroughly learn a second language and while I communicate pretty well, there are still plenty of situations in which someone could easily tell me to learn Spanish or go home.

I’m reminded of the suspiciously fictitious grocery store story floating around facebook, which goes something like this:

A woman is on her cell phone speaking another language.  After she ends the call, a white man in front her says, “I didn’t want to say anything while you were on the phone, but you are in America now.  You need to speak English.”

The woman, surprised by his comment, replies with, “Excuse me?”

To which the man explains, “if you want to speak Mexican, go back to Mexico.  In America, we speak English.”

To which the woman responds, “Sir, I was speaking Navajo.  If you want to speak English, go back to England.”

Which brings me to a different aspect of living in a different language.  I used to wonder if people speaking a different language in public felt strange about it.  I realize now that English does not sound strange to me, so it does not feel strange to speak it, regardless of the location.  It feels more odd to communicate with my daughter in Spanish.  When we communicate, it is for our private purposes, not for anyone else’s, and so there’s no reason why someone else needs to understand what we are saying, unless of course there are others involved in the conversation.  When Eliana and I speak in Spanish together it feels weird to me, like we’re acting.  But to Eliana it feels normal.

I’m finally getting fed up with not speaking Spanish fluently.  I am tired of thinking my way through advanced grammatical structures. I just want to know it already.  I’ve returned to my attention to Rosetta Stone several times a week and I’m thrilled to flying through the levels and having my pronunciations accepted.  I’m hoping that in less than a year I’ll be able to say, “Yes, I speak Spanish.”