Lenguaje

 Lenguaje by Samuel Beesley

Me about to go into school on the first day

    Spanish has so many rules and exceptions. There are tenses that are super complicated and I’m expected to learn them for everyday use. While I’m learning at a rapid rate, everyday life in Cuenca requires a LOT of Spanish, from ordering lunch to getting on the bus to buying fruit in the market. I speak Spanish all the time to everyone I talk to, my friends, my teachers, my neighbors, and classmates. I stumble over words, get sentences wrong, and mix up tenses. Hay muchas palabras que no conozco pero necesito conocer.  Hay muchos verbos que aún no he aprendido. There are many words that I don’t know but I need to know. There are many verbs that I haven't learned yet. I’m learning, but the list of rules is a mile long. I notice more and more that I am speaking with more fluency than the day before.  Learning Spanish takes time and practice. Unlike my sister who picks up words without trying, I have vocab lists, grammar sheets, spanish lessons, constant questions, and endless hours of practice at school.

Playing the elastic game at school.

Group jump rope!

    All of my classes are in Spanish and some of the subjects would be complicated to learn in English too.  Many of my classes consist of teachers droning on and on.  I pay attention for about 5 minutes, but then it just turns into a jumble of Spanish words.  There are 2 different scenarios that’ll make me snap to attention:  when I hear my name and when I hear the word “tarea” (homework).  When I hear my name in class I jolt up with a mix of adrenaline, panic, and fear.  I then proceed to look around and if nobody’s looking at me expectantly, I just go back to my thoughts.  When someone says that word “tarea” I’m at full attention, notebook out and pencil ready.  At the beginning I often didn’t understand when homework was assigned.   After about three weeks, when I learned that the word “deberes” also means homework (seriously, why are there two words for homework!) I started to miss fewer assignments.  I still do miss some.  My day usually starts with natural sciences.   I have 3 classes after that and then break for lunch.  Lunch is interesting, I don’t bring my own lunch but instead buy it from the school kitchen.  The lunch costs about $2.00 and you can pick from 7 or 8 different dishes including arroz relleno, salchipapa, sanduche de pollo, tiramisu, a donut, and cake de café. While everybody’s eating they talk at a rate of speaking that doesn’t seem possible.  Later, when lunch is over, there are three more classes, and then the school day ends.

    I also play fútboI (soccer).   I’m 30% taller than everyone who’s in my age group, which put me in the group with the 14-16 year-olds.  They’ve been playing year-round soccer for 12-14 years and have acquired some skills along the way.  At one practice, my coach explained an exercise in rapid Spanish, put cones down on the field, assigned us each to one, and then blew a whistle.  All of the other players sprinted around the field in patterns I didn’t understand.  So I just stood there.  The coach looked at me and shouted “Corre!” (Run!) I looked at him and yelled back “Donde?” (Where?). 

An early birthday present

       Sometimes it’s difficult to fit in here.  I don't know when some Ecuadorian tiktoker’s subscribers go up.  I don’t know why some guy in a Peruvian reality TV show did something or other.  Because my classmates have never been to Alaska, none of them can relate to what it’s like to have snow from September to April, none of them know what it’s like to backpack on a glacier, and none of them know what it’s like to wear enough clothes to look like a marshmallow going outside.  Most of them have never seen snow.  The closest thing that they have to snow is hail which… isn’t snow.  

My friend’s family runs a zip lining place and we all got to go!

    I can relate to my classmates in other ways though.  We all do and don’t want to be at our school, all of us are teenagers, and we all like to mess around.  Just yesterday I walked up to the lunch counter and ordered arroz relleno.  The man behind the counter said that they were out, so I ordered the other dish on the menú.  He said he didn’t have that dish either. There wasn’t anything else on the menu, so he offered me a ham and cheese sandwich.  I bought it and waited around for a bit while he heated it up.  A little while later my classmates and I were sitting on the grass eating our sandwiches when another classmate came running over to us and said, “Ustedes! Hay Nachos!” (Guys! There are nachos!).  Literally every last one of us jumped up and sprinted to the counter with $1.50.  That day we all ate nachos for lunch. 

Horseback riding at my mom’s friend’s house outside of Quito

I learned how to milk cows and got to feed the calves.

    So yeah, It’s hard to fit in a lot of the time but even if I’m still learning the language I can connect with people on some level.  This experience is one of the hardest I’ve been through, but it’s changing the way I think about learning.  Say for example I’m learning how to solve a rubik’s cube.  When I learn something new, I think of it kinda like spanish.  The fact that learning spanish isn’t optional (I HAVE to speak it) gives me confidence in my ability to learn other new things.  If I think of solving the rubik’s cube as a new challenge but something that I can definitely do, I’ll learn to solve it faster.

My birthday, ice cream pie!

Swinging over Quito

Summary : This situation is challenging in some ways but most of the time it’s worth it!

 

Running down the scree on Ruco Pichincha