**Disclaimer** This was written as an e-mail, and not edited. Also, I was cold when I wrote it. And cracked out from lack of sleep and culture shock **/Disclaimer**
Really, what I'm doing right now is putting off taking a shower, since I have to be up at the ass crack of dawn tomorrow for orientation-y things, and it's so cold now that I really don't want to get all naked and wet.
Anyway, I'm bored. They don't actually have us doing anything until tomorrow, so I sat and talked to the girl who's been down here for two months, she's pretty cool. I hope I continue to like her. She's 21, taking a semester off before she graduates in the spring from some tiny college near Boston. She's funny, and she has the entire series of Friends on DVD with her, which I will be borrowing, since I only brought 1 disc of the Simpsons and a few random movies. The other woman must be in her 60s or so, but she seems like she's lived a cool life. She did 2 stints in the peace corps out of college, and this is like her retirement celebration.
I think I'm the only one here who doesn't speak a whole lot of Spanish, which is unnerving. At dinner, the cook sat down with us and was talking to the girl (Laura) and I got lost, and Laura would occasionally translate and occasionally not, and the cook (Sylvia) would sometimes look directly at me while talking, and I could only understand like every 8th word of what she said, and I felt dumb. Although I did understand that breakfast is between 6:30 and 7:15 (like I said, ass crack).
Okay, I need to bathe now, I've been awake for way too long. I can't even do the math with the time difference. I'm pretty sure it's been 70 bajillion hours since I've slept. So, shower, freeze, sleep, see what tomorrow brings. Hopefully an immediate and miraculous grasp of Spanish.Wish me luck!
Anyway, I'm bored. They don't actually have us doing anything until tomorrow, so I sat and talked to the girl who's been down here for two months, she's pretty cool. I hope I continue to like her. She's 21, taking a semester off before she graduates in the spring from some tiny college near Boston. She's funny, and she has the entire series of Friends on DVD with her, which I will be borrowing, since I only brought 1 disc of the Simpsons and a few random movies. The other woman must be in her 60s or so, but she seems like she's lived a cool life. She did 2 stints in the peace corps out of college, and this is like her retirement celebration.
I think I'm the only one here who doesn't speak a whole lot of Spanish, which is unnerving. At dinner, the cook sat down with us and was talking to the girl (Laura) and I got lost, and Laura would occasionally translate and occasionally not, and the cook (Sylvia) would sometimes look directly at me while talking, and I could only understand like every 8th word of what she said, and I felt dumb. Although I did understand that breakfast is between 6:30 and 7:15 (like I said, ass crack).
Okay, I need to bathe now, I've been awake for way too long. I can't even do the math with the time difference. I'm pretty sure it's been 70 bajillion hours since I've slept. So, shower, freeze, sleep, see what tomorrow brings. Hopefully an immediate and miraculous grasp of Spanish.Wish me luck!
Take care to avoid these while you're down there, as I hear they're horrifying and somewhat common in Central America - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dermatobia_hominis
ReplyDeleteDon't worry about the Spanish. I've traveled and worked and studied and volunteered in at least 5 countries the language of which I did not speak. You will learn to cope enough to be helpful, sweet, and loved. Especially if you work with kids at all - when I volunteered at an orphanage for 2 weeks in Mexico, they taught me Spanish faster than any other method, and they just thought it was funny when I didn't know what was going on -- they loved me anyway. Kids are great that way! The program organizers wouldn't have sent you there without fluency if they thought it was going to be a problem -- and they're the experts, right? Hope you love every moment tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteI just emailed you back. You're amazing. Todos los dias. I adore you.
ReplyDeleteLindsey...I did not need that, but thanks. I'll be sure to run screaming from anything larger than a gnat.
ReplyDeleteMolly, thanks for the happy thoughts, all good points. And apparently I'm mostly there to be an exemplar of native English speaking, so Spanish isn't a pressing issue except at home and outside of the placement.
Katie: como se dice "i miss you so bad"?