Practicing Spanish 24/7
I made it to Chile! It may surprise some of you to know that flying from Auckland, NZ to Santiago, Chile is relatively easy. I had an 11-hour direct flight that left New Zealand at 7:40pm on October 22nd and arrived in Chile at 2:40pm on October 22nd. What was more surprising to me than that flight path was the number of people making the journey with me. The plane we took had 44 sets of three rows of three seats across down the plane, with every chair occupied. I, unfortunately, found myself in row 43, in the middle seat of the middle section. Not the ideal placement, especially since I always appreciate having a window seat to capture the view from the air. To make matters slightly worse, my row-mates were not the most courteous, with the gentleman to my left occupying about ⅓ of my seat for the majority of the flight as he slept. There was more PDA than one would expect on a cramped plane, hot plane, too. At least more than I expected, which is zero. Row 42’s peculiar couple, a woman likely in her 30’s paired with a man I’d place in his 70’s, gave me a front row seat to their makeout session that lasted the duration of the flight. All I can say is thank goodness for noise canceling airpods and sleep masks.
My seat placement in the plane made it so that I got very little sleep during the flight. But, that did allow me to binge-watch every episode of Life After Death with Tyler Henry, which I downloaded on Netflix before I left. I strongly recommend this show - it is very interesting and there are many cliffhangers that keep you clicking the “watch next episode” button!
In Chile, I had to go through the special customs line since I declared having brought food with me. Now, I feel like I could have gotten by without having done that since they did not even look at the bag of almonds or the two peanut butter sandwiches that I had in my bag that I was told I should declare. But I figured it was better safe than sorry and I did not want to pay any fines. However, going through this extra search did cause some additional stress. As a reminder, I am traveling with an absurd amount of medical supplies, which includes about 30 vials of insulin. All of this is for personal use and back-ups, just-in-case, but to an outsider, say a customs officer, it could easily look like the importation of medication to sell. I tried to explain that I had letters to verify that I need all of the insulin that I had and to explain why I had it, but I was getting shut down and told to wait. The first officer I spoke to, went to find another, who went to find another, who had a huddle to chat with another, and then got a manager. I first was asked, through gestures, if the insulin was mine or for the older woman standing next to me. When I explained that it was mine, I got a concerned look back. To that I reiterated that I had letters from doctors and officials. At this point, another woman who came in on the same plane as I did overheard and repeated in Spanish what I said. So, it was now clear the confusion came from having no one to speak English with me. The officer told the woman to ask me how long I’d be in Chile. I said two months but then quickly explained that I had all of it supplies due to my year-long travel around the world. When the kind woman translated this, I was easily cleared to go without further issue. Good way to get your heart rate up, that is for sure!
After all of that, I was through, made my way to get my pre-arranged shuttle and was dropped off at the student residence where I’m staying during my 3 weeks of Spanish courses. In signing up for this housing, I thought the “students” in student residence were others learning Spanish at the same place as I am. But, they are actually university students from abroad or outside Santiago studying here. So, all of them speak Spanish fluently. Good practice I guess!
After getting a tour and unpacking, I ate one of my peanut butter sandwiches and settled in for the night. During this time, what that looks like is rewatching Jane the Virgin but dubbed in Spanish with English subtitles so that even when I am unwinding I can still practice.
Sunday, I ventured out to the grocery store to pick up some essentials. I will just say that grocery shopping in a new country in the first place is stressful and then doing that in a foreign language (one you are not proficient in) is 10x worse! I made it through though, and only didn’t know how to answer one of the questions asked to me. And, that could be because I didn’t know what the question was… But saying “no sé” seemed to work out fine in that situation.
My Spanish classes have been a whirlwind so far! I feel like I am making a lot of progress and then I get out into the world outside of the Spanish language school and I am put right back into my place! Having learned French for so many years, the grammar comes very easy to me. But actually speaking Spanish, that is a different story. I have to keep reminding myself that I need to pronounce every sound in the words, including the final one. It also doesn’t help that I can’t roll my Rs. I’m sure I sound like a crazy person in the evenings if anyone can hear me in the student residence, because I am spending hours whispering tongue twisters and doing vocal exercises over and over again to myself to try to figure out how to master a Spanish accent, rolled Rs and all.
These classes are also showing me just how much I do know in French, so that is an unexpected linguistic confidence boost that I am gaining. Every time I want to say something in Spanish, my brain goes to how to say it in French (not even English!) and then comes the frustration that I know it in French but that doesn’t quite help me. And… sometimes it hinders me. Like when I know the proper word in Spanish but while talking I say it in French instead. So, I am simultaneously trying to build up my Spanish vocabulary and remove “c’est” and “mais” from it, haha!
The grammar classes run from 9:30am-1pm. I then have an hour and a half break for lunch followed by an hour and a half long conversation/speaking class. Most students don’t come back in the afternoon, but I signed up for the “super-intensive course” because I wanted to learn as much as I could in the little time that I have. In the evenings, there are also optional activities hosted by the school. I signed up for all of them this week and plan to do the same in the coming weeks.
On Wednesday, there was a cooking class where we made sopaipillas and pebre. I couldn’t eat it because it was not gluten-free, but it was still a very fun time to hang out with the other students and practice Spanish.
Thursday, I took a salsa class! I am not a fan of dancing at all and it makes me pretty nervous to dance in front of others. I have no sense of rhythm or musicality at all. But, it was actually a very good time, even though I was very bad at it.
Then, on Friday, I went out to lunch with a group of friends I had met during the course of the week to celebrate it being the final day for one of them. In the evening, after my conversation class and relaxing at home for a bit, I went back to the school (about a 3 minute walk from where I am staying) to participate in the intercambia group, a conversation interchange group for Spanish-speaking students learning English and English-speaking students learning Spanish. I had the least Spanish proficiency of the four of us learning the language there. With that said, though, I thought I was able to communicate fairly well. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem the Spanish-speaking student in attendance agreed as he didn’t understand a word that I said. I’m not sure if it was entirely my fault, though, because some of the other students and the teacher present could understand me. Plus, he kept translating everything from Spanish into English for me despite me saying that I could understand and I didn’t need him to do that (in both English and Spanish).
I hope to keep making fast improvements with my Spanish abilities and even after my time in Chile comes to an end, I’d love to continue to learn Spanish as it is something that I have enjoyed doing.
POV: Me juggling learning Spanish
Saturday, I took the morning to sleep in a bit, which is not like me at all! But, learning a language for that many hours every day takes it out of you! I got an iced latte and did some housekeeping and other administrative tasks that were on my to-do list before heading out in the afternoon. There is a park down the street from me that I walked through until I ended up at an art museum and explored that. By the time I made it back from the walk home, it was already time for dinner and to get ready to wind down for the night. Most people likely were going out for Halloween parties last night, but I followed my typical routine of doing my Spanish practice on Duolingo (I have a 104-day streak at the moment!), repeating words in Spanish to myself, and watching Jane the Virgin until I fall asleep.
¡Hasta la próxima semana!
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Amazing! xoxo