Learning Spanish

How many times have you thought about the fact that when you put two verbs back to back, you don’t conjugate the second verb? Like: I want to go. I want is conjugated and“To go” is the 2nd verb so it’s left alone. These are the thoughts that rumble through my brain five months before we pick up and move our family from Toronto to Mal Pais Costa Rica.
Welcome to the glamourous world of leaving it all behind and starting over.

The things that worry me can change from one breath to another these days. But at this moment there are two: we don't have a place to live and we don’t speak spanish,. Steve is leaving again for Mal Pais in a couple of days for three weeks to try and resolve the living issue. And I’ve begun Spanish lessons. My brain hurts. It has been years, too many to even think about, since I’ve been in a classroom setting. I signed up for a Think in Spanish beginner course. It meets once a week in the dreary basement of a church about as far away from Costa Rica as you can get. I only make it through one session. Barely. Just a few minutes into the class and it all comes back. I feel like the naughty kid I was in grade 9. And 10 and 11. I want to giggle. I want to say “Dos cervecas, por favor. or Donde esta el bano because that’’s all I know. I want to scream at the knob beside me who asks questions just for the sake of it. (What is it about the classroom that brings out the Eddie Haskell in some people? The scratch of chalk on the blackboard. The fluorescent lights. The fear of public humiliation. It all hangs over me like a dark cloud.

And so I skip next weeks lesson and am ashamed for feeling so good about it. Like I got away with something. Chuckling inside about what sort of excuse I’ll give the next week. I don’t do my homework. I ignore an email from Mark, the co-ordinator wondering what’s happened to me. And then it hits me. This isn’t learning for a grade, or learning to please someone else. It’s about survival. About knowing how to buy my groceries and make friends and order food. Even with that motivation I know I can’t go back into a classroom. Instead I convince Mark to credit me for the lost classes and use them towards one on one sessions. Two hours, three times a week.

I meet Leyte in a sunny room in the west end offices of Oise. I squeak out an embarrassed “hola” and spend the next two hours trying to impress the queen of cuba, a lovely reserved young woman who I desperately want to please. I am now on lesson 8. I try to navigate the language, racking my brain for each word. I sound like some lunatic spewing out staccato sentences. And, in the midst of this brain storm, one english phrase keeps popping into my mind. “I pity the fool”. Mr T’s wisdom is stuck on a loop each time I think about poor Steve trying to learn this. Unlike me he doesn’t have french to rely on and most people who only speak one language don’t think about HOW they put together sentences, they just do it. Steve’s wrapped up in trying to design our house and co-ordinate the construction from here. So far he’s made very little progress with the language tapes we have.

My apologies to all spanish speaking folks but here goes: Estoy muy contente parque puedo hablar y entiender un poco de espanol. I have learned the basic verbs: to be (there are two, ser and estar), to want, to like, to need. I know how to say: I don’t understand. (no entiendo). I am crazy (Soy loco). I have three kids and we are hungry. Tengo tres hijos y tenemos hambre. I pretend to understand why the word for morning and tomorrow are the same (manana) and that tomorrow morning is manana por la manana. The word for wife and handcuffs is essentially the same (esposa and esposas).

But what I have learned most is appreciation. And utter admiration and respect for the 2 year old set. I now understand the exhaustion my 2 year old fees at the end of the day. We are both struggling to figure out sentence structure, verb tenses , pronouns and nouns. Me go park sounds cute out of the mouth of a two year old. Not so much out of the mouth of THIS babe. And I also know that Paulie and Eva and Riley --their fresh, absorbent brains will soon be exercising their patience with me when I beg them to help me understand how to say something en espanol.