Two-y-pico weeks later...

I think I jinxed myself by saying I resolved to post more often- the past couple of weeks have been wonderfully busy. Semester classes have started (more on those later), and my family (well, parents and Caroline, the smallest Ellis anyway-story about that to come too) came to visit me and we had a fabulous time! I was able to show them all the places in the city I had most wanted to, and we went nonstop all day long just about every day they were here.

Basically right now I'm trying to re-establish my motivation to post- I got distracted there for a while and then got lazy.  Looking back on my first day here I feel like it's been months and months since I arrived, yet saying I've already been here for two months sounds crazy. After having talked with a few trustworthy sources about my blogger's block, I'm just going to pick my own brain and give my findings to you.

One of the most unexpectedly difficult things about this trip has been finding people who want to speak Spanish. Traveling with an American-based study abroad group means that unless the entire group decides to make a concerted effort not to speak English, chances are your Spanish will not improve and perhaps worsen the more time you spend with the group, or if you don't at the very least balance time in English with time with people who speak Spanish as a first language. Making the effort to actively go and seek out native speakers, speakers who want to speak with you, and enough speaking time that the exposure improves your ability is something that requires new motivation every single day. There are days and moments when finding the motivation can be so difficult that I've gotten discouraged and lost my steam for improving at all.
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Side note- first world problems, anyone? Seeing people on the street whose chief concerns include trying to round up enough stray coins for one bus fare (about 30 cents American), making sure they find their next meal, or deciding which bench in the park will make the most sheltered spot to spend the night can put my own complaints into perspective pretty quickly.
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There are lots of people in the city who have a generally Anglo appearance as far as coloring goes, but it's easy enough to spot the features and demeanor of a foreigner if you've been here long enough. Generally I am greeted in English wherever I go until I have the chance to say enough to establish the fact that I speak/understand and prefer to converse in Spanish. I was in and out of moderate to heavy frustration over this for a while, especially the first month I was here, because (in my own head) why did these people keep trying to categorize me as a tourist who doesn't know $@#& and prevent me from reaching my goal?? I live here, thank you very much!! I do my laundry two blocks away and the women at the bakery next door know that my favorite empanada is jamon y queso!!

A few weeks ago-ish, walking to my apartment from the subte stop, I passed the restaurant that's located a few doors down. There's often a waiter standing outside it trying to win over potential diners, and this particular afternoon the designated hustler called "Lady, beautiful! Hello! Special, good deals!" as I walked by, a contrast to the Spanish with which he had called to people walking ahead of me. As I briefly glanced sideways and said "No, gracias", his broken English filled me with ire. Continuing down the sidewalk, though, I took the time to think about it a little more. I am blonde. I have freckles and features and a 5-foot-8-inch body type that are clearly not Latin American. How would this waiter know to identify me as anything but a tourist or someone unfamiliar with the territory and the language, as so many people who look like me would be? He didn't know me, had never heard me say anything, had never seen me put the key into the door of my apartment a few doors down. It was at this point that I came to the acceptance of the fact that no matter how long I stay here, no matter how much porteño slang I know and how many local people I befriend, I will always be "la rubia". I love Latin culture, I love the Spanish language, I love to travel and speak and am gloriously open to new cultural experiences, but alas, I am not a native of the Spanish-speaking world. I am by birth and nature an American. And you know what? I'll own it. Why do anything else with it? I will never stop loving to immerse myself in other cultures and seeing as much of the world as I can, but I accept my own culture as a part of who I am. The United States doesn't have to define me, but it will always be the place I come from, it's the place I'll go back to when this experience is over, and it's my heritage, and I'm perfectly content to say that I appreciate it.

Making a jump back to the language topic, my friend Anna said something encouraging recently about fluency- someone told her during her fall semester in Ecuador that any speaker who can understand what is said to him and make himself understood should consider himself fluent. I guess that means I'm fluent in Spanish. Depending on the situation and my m ood my vocabulary is more ready sometimes than others, but putting some thought into the matter, I realized after she said that that I know absolutely everything I need to know about the language to be able to speak it without a hitch -barring colloquial differences and taking into consideration the fact that my vocabulary will never stop expanding. But it is true that I've known how to navigate through every single situation I've found myself in here so far, and when I've been in public with groups, have saved the lot of us many times from getting lost, missing a destination, not finding the bathroom, or ordering something unappetizing, among other things- kind of cool. I'm excited to see what other adventures I'll find myself having the next few months and where my drive to keep learning takes me.

I'll have more stories for you soon, and I hope everybody is having a wonderful spring up north! The low here two nights ago was 49 degrees F- yikes, not ready for fall yet!