Ahh feels good to get the fingers back on the keyboard. Feel like I haven't typed anything in ages. I guess working will do that to you especially when you're dealing with children. Again my props out to all teachers only increase as the weeks go on and some kids tempt me to test the phrase "can't trust him as far as you can throw him." It's coming up on one solid month here in Catalonia and coincidentally just the other day it hit me that I live in a whole new place now. I was walking up the stairs at school when literally the thought hit me, "Wow (looking at a gorgeous view from the top of the school) I'm thousands of miles from home but I can call this home now." It's still kind of crazy and definitely still working out the kinks of living in a new spot but it's going great so far. I'm enjoying learning every day not only because I'm teaching but because I'm surrounded by three languages every day.
Typing this during the Barcelona - Madrid game. The town literally erupted when Neymar scored
I can honestly say that I enjoy being challenged daily by the grammatical soup that is Catalan and I do feel frustrated more often that not at this point but progress is being made. Even if I only learn a word or two a day in Catalan I'm proud. Plus it'll only help my Spanish progress which seems to be easier to understand the more Catalan I hear. I can tell the difference more easily now after having no idea which was which initially. My goal for next month is the DROP ENGLISH COMPLETELY. Well at least in the spoken form. I'll try to only use English at work and the rest of the time practice my Spanish. It will be amazingly difficult because for one I still think in the grammatical structure of English and that can really throw your sentence formation in Spanish but it's a necessary step I think. I want to force myself to learn it and why not. I'm here! I'll be sure to include that in the weekly recap video.
Speaking of the recap video I'll include the things I did this week in that but here I want to expand on the title of the post. The thought sprang from my mind after I watched a TedX video about Benny the Irish polyglot. In his video he goes on to speak about learning new languages and the fears/obstacles people make up, but also the legitimate ones, that crop up along the way. I wouldn't say I was fearful this first month in Spain but I definitely wasn't attacking the language like I could've and should've been.
After I watched the video I didn't feel like "man I'm terrible and really wasted a lot of time", I was more like "man I was really about to start wasting time by not speaking as much as I can" and thus the idea (or borrowed idea) to put English on hold for a bit came into play. I hadn't really considered the reality that you're not going to forget your native language. Unless something extraordinary happens like I get into a tangle with Superman and he gives me super amnesia from a super uppercut, I don't think I'll be forgetting English anytime soon. So with that said I feel like why not put it on the back burner for a while and give my brain some new exercise while I'm at it. English is so 1991. The part about no day of the week being someday came to me because it's true. No matter how you spin it, if you keep saying I'll get it done someday, you're gonna run out of days. I don't want to run out of days and languages have always peaked my interest whether I'll admit or not. Now that I'm here I can see first hand the power of language and I think being able to hold multiple languages in your head is really something cool.
I'll liken my language journey to this quote from Zenpencils. If you haven't checked out the site you really should. Gives a cool spin to some great inspirational and thought provoking quotes.
http://zenpencils.com/comic/87-samuel-beckett-ever-tried-ever-failed/
"I don't enjoy failing because of the failure, I enjoy it because of the knowledge gained that something better has filled an eager and waiting space." -Me
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