Y, oh, Y

Learning a new language as an adult is difficult.  It just is. I don't want to get into the debate of whether it is harder to learn Spanish or English or Arabic or Chinese or Tagalog.  Because I really think that each of them has their easy parts and each has their Ijustwanttoshootmyselfintheheadnow parts.  Let's just all take a minute to say kudos to those that have accepted the challenge of learning something new, later in life.  I do think we all deserve it.  And, yep, that is me, breaking my own arm, as I pat myself on the back.  

I started my formal study of the Spanish language two years ago.  But I have quite a history with the language that begins almost from birth.  When I was about 18 months old my family moved to Central America, where we stayed for a good number of years.  I learned to speak Spanish and English at the same time.  I picked it up organically, meaning I did not study it.  I did not learn to conjugate, I did not learn what an indirect object was...I just learned how to speak and I learned to speak fluently and like a native.  But then we moved back to the U.S. and I refused to speak a word of Spanish because no one wants to be the odd kid who speaks another language.  That lasted for a long time.  Almost 20 years.  And then I met B and Spanish was back in my life.  This time I picked up words and phrases from him.  Ones that I heard repeated a lot.  Still no idea how a verb was conjugated or how to put a sentence together but I could tell you that something was sucio (dirty) or asco (disgusting).  After the girls were born I learned bit more - no se toca (don't touch), siéntate (sit down), cálmate (calm down) and a few more.  We did have little kids after all...

My actual, formal lessons began in earnest when we moved here.  And I think I have done ok.  I was even feeling a bit smug as I finished my first post in Spanish.  Ok, so I was able to take some time in writing it.  Going back to correct mistakes.  (It is so much easier to write than to speak.  When you are speaking, you have to conjugate on the fly.  You have to think ahead and hope you have all the words at your disposal to be able to finish the sentence you started.  You have to be comfortable stopping mid-sentence, realize that you don't have all the words you need to finish that sentence, and then start all over again.  Maybe more than once to just get one thought across.)  I am getting pretty good these days and less and less often I fumble around for the right words.  I really thought I was getting a handle on it.

And then they went and changed the alphabet.

Soak that in for a minute.

They. Changed. The. Alphabet.

Yep, just dropped a few letters out of the alphabet completely since they felt they were a bit redundant.  Changed the  pronunciation of a couple more.  They changed when some words are capitalized and where the accent can and cannot be placed on others.  There was a laundry list of changes published and I was not very excited to learn about any of them.  Who would be?  I had just spent two years learning the rules and now they are going to change them?   Nope, uh uh, no way.  Who do I appeal this to?

The answer - the Real Acedemia Española (Spanish Royal Academy).  They are the governing body of the Spanish language.  But I don't think they would care about what my little issues and I think they are a bit more versed in the nuances of the language (any language) than I.  At least I hope so...

Founded in 1713 their mission is to keep the Castilian language unified. (If you have been to Spain, Argentina or Chile - you will know that they have failed in keeping Spanish speakers to one voice...oh, the accents that even I can differentiate.)  They have 46 members, each of whose only job is to keep pure and in true voice their singular letter of the alphabet.  Yep, they each have one letter that they are responsible for and even then it is only the uppercase or the lowercase, not both.  The latest letter opening is for the silla B (seat for letter B).  If you have ever been on Sesame Street when B was the letter of the day you may have a chance but probably not.  The members elected are usually prolific and famous writers, historians, and important persons from the arts and sciences.  Oh, and they have to be native Spanish speakers so that would get me left off the short list pretty quickly.  The voting process is long and the seats are hard won but once you have a seat at the Academy, it is for life.  Unless you are the letters ch, ll and rr.  Then your job ended with the latest changes...

Oh, about those last changes, posted about a year ago (but that I was just informed of last week) are as follows (just in case you need to brush up):

• The letters 'ch' and 'll' and 'rr' (which is different from r) have been eliminated from the alphabet.  {Good to know I am not going crazy because I swear I learned them as a kid and now my kids think I am weird when we sing the alphabet song and I use them...}
• The pronunciation of the letter y will change from i-griega to ye (or yay).  V will go from vay to uve and W from doble vay to uve doble.  {I kinda get these changes.  B and V sound exactly - e.x.a.c.t.l.y.- the same in Spanish.  Makes it hard to make the distinction when spelling something. Something like, oh,  I don't know, like my last name. Now instead of having to say vay chica - which is v - I can say uve.  If, and only if, that person has read the RAE guidlines.  BTW - vay grande is B.}
• o (which means or) will no longer have a tilde, or accent, mark.  Well, of course except...There are rules to the rules and I didn't understand them all.
• Terms that come before proper nouns - ex. Gulf of Mexico - will now not be capitalized   In Spanish it will now be written gulf of Mexico.  
• The ex-, anti- or pro- that precedes the noun, ex. - ex-wife, ex-president, pro-human rights -no longer becomes hyphenated.  They will be considered one word. 

And on, and on, and on...  If you would like to see all the rule changes, click here.  As for me, I think it will take this old goat a while to remember that they have changed the pronunciation of y, much less any of the other rules. 

First Day of School

We have been out of school for 83 days.  Doesn't sound like a lot but that is 83 days of 24/7 togetherness.  83 days of being asked if we can go to the park, the pool, the bounce house.  Even if we just got back fro the park, the pool, or the bounce house just hours (or minutes) ago.  1992 hours of listening to them bicker, fight, and tussle over toys (except when sleeping and even then MadHatter yells at her sister).  Too many minutes to even fathom of telling them to "find something to do, or I will find it for you and trust me, you won't like what I find"

That ended this morning.

Stinkerbell officially entered Pre-Kindergarten.  She was really excited about school starting.  Not so much about the fact that she would have to switch rooms and teachers.  All was well when we got there and found out that her favorite teacher moved with her!  

MadHatter is in a holding pattern.  After having graduated from Pre-Kinder 2 in December she has to go back until she can start Kindergarten at the International school in July.  So, she is really just going to have something to do and some friends to play with.  She doesn't seem to care as she bounded down the stairs this morning raring to go.

And of course I snapped a few pictures.  Stinkebell really didn't want her picture taken.  And MadHatter didn't want hers taken with Stinkerbell but I made them.  It's what Mom's do.  And then Stinkerbell ran off with the dog while MadHatter went to find a location for her other "official" pictures (her words).  We walked to the bench at the end of the park and she posed, and posed, and posed.  Without any prompting.

Maybe I have taken their picture a few times???

My Thick English Accent

I am very concious of the fact that I have an accent here in Chile.  Try as I might, I will never speak Spanish like a native (especially a Chilean, which I hear is a good thing).  But I do pride myself on the fact that my accent is actually very good for a gringa.  I can roll my r's with the best of them and I can even get just the right amount of hhhughhh in my silent, but not so silent, J.  I do know there are words that cause me problems and it makes it hard for others to understand what I am trying to say.  This was expected.  What I didn't expect was to encounter problems with my English accent.  For goodness' sake, I learned English in the midwest.  We don't have an accent in the midwest.  Midwest English is universally understood by everyone.  Everyone apparently, except for the South American's.  If this had been brought to my attention just once, I would have thought that it was an isolated event.  But since I have been in Chile, three seperate people have told me,  in varying ways,  that I am difficult to understand when speaking English.  Who would have thought that the natives would be more forgiving of my Spanglish?

The first time someone mentioned that I was hard to understand was about 2 weeks ago.  A friend of ours was having a party and we were delighted to be invited.  The guest list was varied and there were people from the U.S.,  Chile and Bolivia.  I was introduced to a cousin from Bolivia and her English is like my Spanish - passable but obviously not as comfortable for her as her native language.  We did our best, with both of us speaking more Spanish the English and we were getting by pretty well.  But then she asked me a question I just couldn't answer in Spanish.  I just didn't have the vocablulary to even attempt it, so I answered her in English.  In return I got a blank stare.  Ok, so I say it again, trying different words to make it a bit simpler.  This time, she turns to my friend and states "I cannot understand a word she is saying".  My girlfriend repeats the same thing I just said, still in English, with her Texas accent and lo and behold, she understood every word.  Amazing.  She understood it through the Texas drawl.  This happened for the rest of the night...I needed a translator.  To translate my English into English! 

The next times I happened to be out and about.  When people hear you speaking English (and they hear me because I am usually talking to Stinkerbell), and they speak English (even if it is only two words) they tend to want to practice with you...whether you want to or not.  I don't blame them.  They don't have a lot of opportunity to practice here as 95% of the population does not speak even those two words of English. So as much as I want to practice my Spanish every chance I get, I try to be accomodating and play along for awhile. 

I was at Easy and I stopped a gentleman to ask where to find an item.  From my Spanish, he knew I was not native and so took the opportunity to speak to me in English.  But we were getting nowhere fast. Seeing as I only had an hour before I had to pick up MadHatter, I tried it another way.  I said the Spanish, and then the English -  Necesito una lampara, I need a lamp. Funny how he understood my spanish accent, but not the English.  So he could have pointed me in the direction of Aisle 12 and that would have been that.  But before pointing me in the right direction, he felt it his duty to correct my pronunciation of the English word.  He repeated to me, slowly and as if I was just learning the language, the word lamp. You mean a Laahhm.  My turn to look confused.  Did he just tell me that the way to pronounce lamp is like llama (without the a at the end and not the way the spanish pronounce it with the ll being y). I said, "Yes, a lamp"...and he once again says "laahhm", just like my Spanish teacher does when she is trying to correct me.  I finally got to Aisle 12 and got great bedside table lamps so it was all worth it in the end.  And then the same thing happened when the woman behind me in line at checkout tried talking to me. We started off in English and I knew this was not going well when each time she figured out what I was saying she would say, "Oh...you mean..." and repeat exactly what I said.  I wanted to say, "Isn't that what I just said?" but I like living here and don't really want to make the entire English speaking population angry with me. 

I think my problem is that I speak too clearly.  You see, I tend to pronounce each word, letter for letter, especially when talking to someone for whom English is a second language.  I take more care talking to them and I choose my words differently.  I make sentences simple and don't go around using high falutin words to sound impressive.  And I tend to slow down a bit - but for me that doesn't mean much, since I speak very, very fast.  But since it is not the way I usually speak, it tends to be unnatural and perhaps a bit less understandable.  So I am going to take a lesson from the Chileans themselves - I am going to do what they do when speaking to a foreigner, and that is not change a single thing.  When talking to me, someone they know has a tenuous grasp on the language at best, they still drop the ending of every other word, use slang that only a Chilean would know and merge 2 or 3 words into one completely unrecognizable new one.  I will just speak the way I am used to and if they can't understand me, I will switch to Spanglish.  At least then I don't have an accent.

Today's Blog is brought to you by the letter F...

Today felt like it had something to teach me and perhaps, just maybe, I will learn something.  But not right now.  I am just not in the mood.   Right now I am so Fabulously Frustrated, I can't for the life of me try to sort out the lesson of the day.  Am I supposed to be keeping my chin up when nothing is going my way, or was I learning to be gracious when someone is trying to help me do something I would rather be doing myself?  Or maybe it is just that today, for the first time, I am feeling so fantasticaly foreign in this country I now call home.  I knew it would happen, was waiting for it actually, but it still doesn't prepare you for when the time actually comes.

It started weeks ago...Weeks ago, you say?  But you haven't been in Chile that many weeks...How could it have started weeks ago?  But it did.  Our heating system was checked and our water was regulated and we should have been good to go.  But it didn't work that way.  Our heat is sporadic and it depends on me going out into our laundry room about 5 times a day to open a valve so that the pressure is high enough to push the heat into the house.  I sometimes forget, or I am away and the pressure drops enough that the house is like an igloo by the time I get outside to turn the valve.  Then I get the heat to kick in about 4 pm and the house is a furnace when we are trying to sleep and the pressure needs to be reduced.  It has been an interesting game of trying to balance the scales since we got here.  To make it worse, the hot water is also regulated by this system and I can't for the life of me figure it all out.  And I have been trying to get it fixed for the past couple of weeks.  But this is Chile...and they will get to it, well, when they get to it.

It came to a head on Sunday.  Cold showers and I do not get along.  Lukewarm showers and I aren't even friendly acquaintances.  I like my showers steaming hot.  I mean steaming.  When I don't have scalding hot water, I tend to get a bit grumpy.  I was determined to finally get it under control and here is where it all falls apart for me.  In California, I would have woken up Monday morning and started calling plumbers. I would have kept calling until one of them gave me that famous 4 hour time slot where he would show up in the last 15 minutes of the last hour, but he would have shown up - that day.  I would have been in a hot shower sometime before bed on Monday night.  But here I am, in Chile, speaking enough Spanish to get by - but not enough to conduct phone conversations.  I am at the mercy of others.  Others need to make my appointments.  Others need to explain my problems.  Others need to do things for me and that is something I am just not used to.   And it frustrates me.  It frustrates me because I am not used to having others do things for me that I am very capable of doing myself...at least when I speak the language.  I can try and pretend that I can do all the things that I used to be able to do, but I really can't.  I am a foreigner in a foreign land and try as I might, I just don't speak the language well enough to get my meaning across to a plumber and I must rely on someone else to do it for me.  And it's not going down like a spoonful of sugar.

Don't get me wrong, I am still very capable.  I have surprised myself in the past couple of weeks with the things I can do.  But sometimes life just let's you feel all smug and you start thinking that you have this expat thing licked, and then it kicks you back down a notch or two and you realize that one of these things is not like the others - and it's you.  But I won't let it define me.  I won't allow this frustration to stall my drive to learn the language.  I want to become independent again.  I don't want to just get by, I want to flourish.

Rainy Days and Monday's...

As long as there is not rain and cold to start off each and every week, I don't usually mind it every once in a while.  It gives you the excuse to build a fire (though you can't do that here in Chile unless it is a gas fire place) and snuggle under a blanket.  I also get to wear sweaters and boots that I haven't worn in years because it never got cold enough in California. This week the rain is very welcome because recently the air quality has gotten so bad here in the city, the government has taken to using their  “restricción vehicular” system.  It's a pretty good system and easy to implement. When the air gets so bad you can actually taste and smell it (in your lungs, on your skin, lingering in your hair), they start taking cars off the road.  First they start with those that don't have catalytic converters.  Those get parked when the smog is pretty mild and that seems to be all winter.  Then, when we hit a pre-emergency point, they start pulling more cars off the road.  At pre-emergency levels, the government pulls cars off the road according to the last digit of their license plate and it goes in order.  1 and 2 first, then 3 and 4 etc...  I am told that you can live here for years and if you time it right, you will never be affected.  I have been here 2 months, and lucky me, it was my turn to be parked for the day...if only someone had told me.

B took MadHatter to school in the morning on Wednesday or I might have noticed that there was less traffic.  Or maybe not - I am not really awake at that hour.  We don't get a paper except on Thursdays - Sundays and because my Spanish is not great, I tend not to watch the nightly news.  If any one of these things were different, I may have known not to drive.  The digits that are grounded for the day are published in the paper and flashed all over the news.  But in my oblivious state, I head out at about 11 am to get a birthday present for the party we were invited to on Saturday.  This time I do notice that traffic is light (by 11 am I am usually a bit more aware of my surroundings) but just chalk it up to being Wednesday, and everyone was just staying inside to avoid breathing the air (the smog was so thick that I couldn't even see the mountains)



You can make out the smallest peaks but the tallest peaks are hidden in the smog. 
They should be about as tall as the tree in the foreground. (Picture to follow)

I get to the store, get what I need, pick up MadHatter and head home for lunch.  I still need to do my Spanish homework so I get the girls in bed for naps and sit down to finish it up.  Ok, I get the girls in bed, check my facebook, make a pot of tea, clean that up and then sit down to do it.  I may have moved but I can still put off homework.  I must have gotten really engrossed in it because I didn't realize that my teacher wasn't there.  Nani finally asked me if I was going to have lessons today and I realize that she is a half an hour late.  I go get my phone to check for messages and sure enough, she had to cancel class.  Why?  She couldn't drive her car because of the restrictions.  It's the first I had heard of them enacting them today...and it's 3 pm...and I had been driving all day.  I think, what are the odds that out of all 10 numbers, and me being here for only 2 months, that the number is 3 (my final digit)?  Don't think I will be playing the Lotto any time soon with that kind of luck.  I just thank my lucky stars I didn't get pulled over!  It's a whopper of a fine - about $300 US.  I guess I could have played the "I'm a blonde from the US and just didn't know" card but you really don't want to use those up on things that could really be avoided. 

So, the rain that washes this nastiness away for all of about a day is welcome in my neck of the woods.  It was so clear and beautiful this morning with all the snow that fell on the mountains.  The mountains you could actually see again.


Ah, you can see the mountains again!  (not the same vantage point as the last picture, but you get the idea)

Let it rain.  Maybe once a week so this junk can't settle in my lungs and I can let the girls play outside.  And let it rain often enough that the snow on the mountains accumulates so that the ski resorts open later this month.  Just don't let it rain so much that we have to worry about mud slides and flooding... And please give me some sort of warning next time I am not supposed to drive on the streets.  I don't want to have to play charades with a cop!

Yo estudio...sort of

It's Sunday and I am doing homework.  Well, I'm taking a break from homework because obviously my blog does not count as Spanish homework.  Unless I wrote it in Spanish.  That will not be happening today, or even next month, so a break from homework it is.  And since I am a stupendous procrastinator, it may just turn into finishing the blog entry, taking a run on the treadmill, feeding the girls their dinner, eating dinner, showering and then - and only then - finishing my homework that is due tomorrow. 

For those of you who went to school with me, you know that I just don't study well.  And on a Sunday, I just wouldn't have studied at all.  Don't get me wrong, I have always been good student and I have always gotten what I considered to be good grades.  They could have been better, if I had only had the inclination to study.  I did what I had to do to get by and nothing more.  See, I was a great A/B student all through school, but I was also a procrastinator and a crammer.  Test on Monday, Sunday night would find me in front of a textbook.  Homework on Wednesday afternoon, Wednesday morning would do just fine to finish that up. It got me through college and even got me on the Dean's list once or twice but the problem I have found is that it works in the short term.  I do very well on the homework, the test, the final and then the information just deletes itself from my hard drive.  The hard part for me right now is that I can't really do that when learning a new language.  I can't cram the information into my head, and then forget it almost immediately.  I actually have to learn it.  And by learn it I mean backwards, forwards, inside out and upside down.  And I am finding that is harder to do as I get older and have more responsibilities.  So it means homework on a beautiful, sunny fall day (don't get me started on the fact that it is fall in May...) and B is out running with the puppy, the littles are sleeping and I am sitting in a very small office with almost no outside light, at a desk, conjugating verbs.  Which I never liked doing in English and the same can be said for doing it in Spanish.  Actually, I like it even less in Spanish because I didn't really learn to do it in English (see cramming, above).  I know I did it in high school, and at some point in life I knew what a modifier was and what a reflexive verb was but that time is far behind me.  Now I feel like I am learning it all from scratch and it is frustrating at times.  Not because I can't learn it, or that it is so very difficult but because I could have saved myself a lot of time and effort  by just paying attention and really learning it the first time.  Wish I could talk to my 16 year old self and tell her to just study already so she could make it easier on me today.  Then again, if I could talk to my 16 year old self there are probably more important things we would need to discuss - like the attitude and the self importance and even the hair.  Especially the hair. 


That's me, 2nd from left.   Yes, those bangs are about all the hair I had.
And yes, I remember being able to see through them.

All right, procrastinating over.  I do have to answer to my teacher tomorrow (and by answer, I mean answer.  Probably 100 questions asked of me in Spanish in which I have to answer correctly in Spanish, right verb tense and all) so I better get back to it.  But maybe just a quick run first...

Who's up for a game of Charades?

There is actually a Competitive Charades Tournament.  It is held in Austin, Texas and the next time I go see my parents, I may just make sure that the visit coincides with the competition.  You think I jest...I would have thought so too a couple of weeks ago.  But in the past five weeks (exactly the amount of time I have been in Chile), I have gotten so good at playing charades that I might have a shot at the title.  Wanna be my partner?  No one here seems to want to play with me on a regular basis, except Nani, and I suspect that is only because she lives in my house and hasn't found a way to escape yet.

It wouldn't be so bad if my Spanglish was more Span than glish.  We will work on that.  In the meantime it does provide for some funny moments, and some embarassing, but I have always been able to laugh at myself so really it is mostly just funny.  Like the other afternoon - I needed to get out of the house and I decide to take the girls with me.  People seem to be more forgiving of my attempts at communication when there are 2 little girls that alternate between looking confused and laughing when Mama's hands are flying around and pointing at things and generally just making a fool of herself.  We had gotten our errands done after having to mime the words "I need concrete nails" and "where do I find the dog nail clippers" and it was nearing lunch time.  As a treat, I decide that I am going to pick up some Burger King for the girls on the way home.  I can handle the drive through, I think.  I did the drive through at McDonald's just fine when my parents were here.  So, I pull up to the box and the man on the other end asks me what I would like, at least I think that is what he is asking.  In the U.S. they sound like the teacher from Peanuts...waah wahhh wa wahhh wah.  It is a whole other level of not understanding when you are talking in a foreign language.  I listen as hard as I can...and I freeze. I suddenly realize that I am not at McDonald's where I can order a "Cajita Feliz".  You simply cannot order a Happy Meal at Burger King.  That would be like going to In N Out and ordering a Big Mac...you can do it but you aren't getting it.  So now I am stuck and I can hear every spanish word I do know giggling as they fly right out of my brain.  I quickly try to search for the equivalent of a happy meal or a kids menu on the board in front of me, but there is just nothing there that I can make sense of.  I do the only thing I can do and pull through to the window and try to enlist the order taker in a game of charades.  Nothing doing.  He either wasn't in the mood for the Gringa with the hands flying or he just doesn't know good charades playing when he sees it.  What is left for me to do?  I say a hasty Adios and high tail it to McD's (or Mr. Donalds according to my oldest) and order "Dos Cajita Feliz con Nuggets, papas fritas y jugo naranja".  There are some places that charades just doesn't work and the drive through is one of them.