Tomorrow when I have the talk good....

Hello All! I am here! I am alive! I Love Mexico! I¨ve actually been here for five days now, but I´ve been busy- so many ¨firsts¨. Wednesday night, when I arrived at Villahermosa, I was greeted by my HUGE Mexican family. They literally grabbed me, and I immediately felt loved and safe. There is a lot of hugging and kissing here- and despite the fact that my Spanish is so limited, I could tell everyone loved each other very much, and that this is family I WANTED to be a part of.

It always sort of bothers me when other people describe their experience in another country by saying: Everything is just so different!!!!! Or: The Food is very interesting!!!! Or: I love the culture!!!! Too vague. I want DETAILS! Which is why I am going to tackle things one at a time on this blog. I want to be able to talk about things in detail, and I honestly don´t think I know enough to do justice to a lot of what I am experiencing, which is why this post is solely about my first days of ....duh duh duh..... LANGUAGE IMMERSION....

I have always loved Spanish class. It´s been my best, and favorite class in High School, and I was absolutely thrilled to find out that I would be living in a Latin American country for a year (I still am :) ) But I did NOT anticipate how hard it would be! Language immersion is often described as a mystical experience.... Go to a foreign country for X number of months and you will be FLUENT... YAY! But the part in the middle is what takes work. From the moment I wake up in the morning to the moment I fall asleep, I have to concentrate very hard on what I want to say and HOW I want to say it. I often have to rephrase things in my head 5 or 6 times before I can come up with something that will most likely be understood. It´s absolutely draining.

It´s also absolutely thrilling. It´s hard to describe how exciting it is to have a whole sentence be understood. Or to understand two sentences in a row. But there are many times when I am reduced to simply announcing nouns and hoping that they make sense. Also some things are hard to explain! Here is an example:

Papa: Is there a baseball team in Wisconsin?
Me: Yes, The Brewers.
Papa: What does ¨Brewers¨mean?
Me: ...pause.....um.....a Brewer is... a person.... who works....in a factory of alcohol.
Papa: Oh...I see.

I have yet to meet a native English speaker, but almost everyone knows some nouns and a phrase or two in English, this is sometimes very helpful, but soemtimes less so. Here is another conversation:

Tio: ¨Somethingsomethingsomething Negra o Blanca?¨
Me: Otra Vez Por Favor? No entiendo.
Tio: Negra o Blanca
Me: QUE es negra or blanca?
Tio: White or Black

And so on and so on (we were talking about SAND by the way). ¨Who´s on Second¨anyone? It´s pretty frustrating, but I know that it´s good for me. Also it´s good for my charades skills. Although that´s not always a good option (try acting out CLOSET or PENCIL BOX). Thankfully, I have a very loving and patient family who is willing to watch me string together actions, present tense verbs and a limited number nouns to express such important thoughts as: ¨Tomorrow when to go get papers I need.¨ and ¨Yesterday I much like the dog¨ and ¨What delicious shirt!¨ and are still willing to take me to the store to buy a notebook.