Aprender Español

Things are difficult. I made a major tactical error with my Chilean family. I actually spoke to them on the second night. Not like I had the first night, where I had simple answers to their equally simple questions. The daughter, Rebecca, got a hold of my ipod and upon perusing it she wanted to hear some of the stories of places I´ve been. Quickly, the rest of the family began to join in (Marcela (the mom), Sebastian (the oldest son) and Nico (the younger son)). I actually began answering their questions about the places I´ve been, things I managed to see. They complemented me on my spanish at the end of the night. I was happy, proud of my superior spanish capabilities.

I was wrong. The gloves came off, and for the last few days I have been mired in this word soup that is known to the word as spanish. And worse yet, Chilean spanish, is a large multi ingredient version of word soup, too many local spices to distinctly recognize what´s in it. The family and their friends have decided to treat me as an equal, to make sure that I get caught up to speed on their regular, everyday language. It´s been so difficult at time that, after focusing so hard on the conversation at hand, I forget that I have to speak to keep the conversation going. I make slight head way, but it´s not as exponential or even linear as I had hoped. I didn´t realize that like sports (or anything else) there are to be multiple setbacks on the incline. My brain, knows that I have already made significant progress, but my heart has been so distraught with the recent imposing adversity.

I´m taking spanish classes, which doesn´t seem to be helping quite yet. I learn so many new words each day, that my head feels like jelly. To top it off my classes have been moved to noon, making it that much more difficult to get to the surf in the morning. I definitely will only stay here a month. There is no way I can tolerate this barrage of spanish without being able to splash around in some decent surf with some regularity. Maybe I´ll do another school when I get up to Iquique or Arica, where the towns are much more surf centric. There maybe I´ll make some head way.

As for the living situation outside of my language troubles, it seems to be a great place, Viña. My Chilean family is incredible, the mom cooks for everyone, but makes sure that I am the first to eat every meal. It´s really weird. Also she keeps asking me if I want more food, but there is no way I could eat anymore, the first helpings are huge. We had Spaghetti last night and my portion filled the whole plate and went two or three inches up.

I wish the surf was better/closer, but it´s decent and I guess close enough. I´ll probably get to the water a few times a week and definitely on the weekends. It´ll keep me sane for the month. Next stop is definitely Pichelemu/Punto de Lobos/Cobquecura. I´m thinking I´ll hang out there for another little bit before going to Argentina/Uruguay/Brazil (worse surf) and then I´ll go up to Northern Chile maybe for another month of school. I think that would really help, plus the surf is better.

Alrighty then, back to my spanish world. Voy a escribir pronto. Ciao.