After three years of having my better half, Christofer, playing translator between myself and his Spanish-speaking family, I've decided to take up Spanish lessons here in Bonnyville.
I started last Wednesday and although I was very enthusiastic to get back into a classroom and begin learning such a beautiful language, I certainly wasn't off to a very good start.
I arrived at about 7:25 p.m., which would have been perfect had it been a 7:30 p.m. class. But it wasn't. It was a 7 p.m. class. I was 25 minutes late.
So I scrambled in, finding the only seats left were in the very front row - basically under our teacher's nose. There was no way I was sneaking in sly and unnoticed.
This is completely out of my character. When I was in school, I always arrived about 10 minutes early for some good sucking up with the teacher before class and always found a good seat, front and centre.
But for Spanish class, I arrived late without a notebook and had to scramble through my purse, or rather my “la bolsa,” to find a dull pencil.
Though I arrived late and was already exhausted after a full day of work plus a board meeting, I was not willing to accept defeat. Yet.
“I have the upper hand here,” I tried to convince myself. “I've got a live-in Spanish teacher. This will be a piece of cake. I'll be back at the top of the class in no time.”
Wrong again.
I thought when one signed up to learn a new language that it's not expected to already be fluent in the language. Apparently my classmates didn't get that memo.
I opened my book and realized everyone else was already speaking and understanding Spanish. My eyes felt even heavier as I tried my best not to fall asleep and to follow along.
By the end of class, I was much too tired for my usual hang-after-class-to-suck-up-to-the-teacher act, so I hurried home to unwind - only to find that I had missed the season finale of Big Brother and had a friend ask me, “Can you believe Ian won?” before I was able to catch the late show at 10:30 p.m.
I decided I needed to do lots of studying so I could catch myself up to speed with the rest of my classmates. So the next day, I hurried over to my Spanish textbook and found the study stickers. I ripped the first one off and went to stick it on the corresponding object but was quickly halted.
These stickers are only in Spanish!
So, being too proud to ask Chris for help, I proceeded to look up all 160 of the words, sticking small green stickers all over our apartment. It took hours and I'm still not done.
Chris has been great in helping translate other words I want to use in Spanish. However, with having so many struggles my first week, I think the only words I've become fluent in are those I shouldn't be using in the classroom anyway. So my Spanish teacher will never realize how much I've actually learned!
Despite all these setbacks, I've convinced myself that I'll be fluent by Christmas and finally be able to have a decent conversation with my in-laws.
But that this point, the only conversation I could have with them would get me back in the doghouse for another three years.
