Spotlight

Living with a Spanish family is probably the best thing to  improve language skills.

Tonight at dinner, at the lovely hour of 9:45pm, my host family was talking about someone they had visited at the hospital early today. I was in and out of the conversation due to lack of vocab and trouble understanding the Andalucían accent. I wasn’t sure who it was or if they died (something about a cemetery), but I was still trying to keep up because at some point I knew they were going to ask me about it.

I’ve gotten caught off guard a couple times after I’ve given up and tuned out. I don’t know how it is for others, but I have to actively try and understand Spanish. Apparently I have an on and off switch for language comprehension. Anyways they'll eventually ask me questions and I have to admit I stopped listening and I just imagine Bon Qui Qui looking at me saying: rude. Plus acting like you understand when you don't never helps anybody. 

Despite my attentive listening,  tonight’s question did in fact catch me by surprise. Instead of asking me if I understood the conversation, they asked me if I ever had surgery.  At first I was pleased, it felt like a promotion. I usually have to fight to talk about myself or in general. My host family loves to interrupt, talk over, or seemingly ignore what I have to say, but I’ve been told that’s normal. Also I’d usually be fine just listening if the point of living with a Spanish family wasn’t also to improve speaking skills. 

To cut a long story short: I had surgery to remove a benign tumor (est 5x1 inches) curled around my pelvis in Feb 2011.  Benign=NBD (No Big Deal)= I tend to forget about this life fact until I catch a glimpse of the two inch scar on my back and remember what an awful operation it was. For whatever reason when they actually opened me up the tumor was bigger and deeper than realized. Turns because of this they didn't give me enough aesthetic and I felt part of the removal. I was not happy but also drugged, so the doctor's didn't notice my discomfort until I started sobbing quietly and my body started shaking.

I tried to explain that in Spanish and my satisfaction with my promotion wavered.  As always during spotlight moments, words become molasses on my tongue. Plus most of the medical vocab words I know only cover colds and random body pains.  And unlike my mom or my Spanish profe at CLIC (the language school), they don’t understand when I fallback to English.

However I managed to convey my experience via gestures and context clues; ‘twas a tad exhausting. Storytelling isn’t necessarily a strong suit, and due to lack of practice, when I do find myself with an audience I’m never sure of how to precede. Probably because while attempting to speak I’m also running a commentary on the situation to myself (multitasking another strike out in the strong suit column) that goes generally like this; “Wow they are all looking at me. They are not looking away. Keep talking. What was your point? How do people get use to this? Man those stares are unwavering. What are they thinking? Just hurry up and finish.” 

But the whole experience was like a game of charades. I’d set up the sentence with the action or word at the end of my sentence and they all shout out a word to fill in the blank. We did surprisingly well.  Or at least I think we did, considering I was learning the vocab as we went along rather than verifying it.  

All that was to say:

I thoroughly enjoy my host family. They know just where to push and prod when it comes to my language skills.