One-Way Ticket Part 2: You can only be where you are and nowhere else

By Kristina Francisco
Published: August 7th, 2008 | 12:05pm

Life can be a little hard when you have the vocabulary of a 3-year-old child. It’s been a month since I started Spanish language school in Barcelona, and after four weeks of classes, I probably know about 100 words and can only speak in the present tense.

Though this sounds a little pathetic, it’s an improvement from when I arrived in Spain in mid-June. Back then I really couldn’t say anything. Hola. Gracias. ¿Donde está el baño? But when I decided to come to Europe to escape my quarter-life crisis, I decided that this would be a perfect time to try to learn Spanish … again.

My attempts at learning Spanish reads like a laundry list of failure. In high school, I wanted to drop my Latin class — a dead language that bored me — and transfer to Spanish, but my Latin teacher wouldn’t let me. In college, I dropped Spanish after two quarters because it was really hard to get up at eight in the morning and walk all the way across campus. In the real world, I stopped taking classes in Chicago because it was too expensive, and when living off a non-profit salary and freelancing, every penny counts.

So, here I am in Barcelona, on Spanish Attempt No. 4 — and it isn’t easy. It’s hard to form sentences without having to pause for a few seconds to think about verb conjugation, gender agreement, prepositions, and articles. It’s hard to understand simple things people tell me in the street or at a store (you can only ask people to repeat things a handful of times before it gets awkward). It’s hard when it takes a minute to figure out how to say, “Can you tell me if this is part of the sale or if it’s full price?”

Nevertheless, I’m trying. I walk around Barcelona like a crazy woman, thinking up English phrases, then mumbling them to myself in Spanish. When a friend says something in English, I try to translate in my head. I bought a short novel in Español for Spanish beginners, and I read a little every day. I try to talk with my roommates in Spanish, and they’re patient with me while I fumble around for the words to tell them what I did today.

I want a lot of things from the Spanish language. I want the nuances of the language to open up to me. I want to open my mouth and be able to have an actual conversation with someone in Spanish. I want to learn this language that I’ve wanted to learn for the past decade, and I want to learn it fast.

My friend Jerel, a new friend, ex-pat, and ex-DJ who moved to Barcelona for good after he met a beautiful woman from the Canary Islands, told me, “Your impatience doesn’t serve you. You can only be where you are and nowhere else.” Sounds all Yoda-like, right? But I’ve taken his advice to heart. I should be happy with where I am now, which is a better place than I was two months ago. There’s no need for the frustration, no need for my impatience. Spanish will come in time, and every day, I learn something new, in and out of class.

Jerel also reminded me that my trip here isn’t just to learn a language — it’s to learn about different cultures and myself. Jerel is becoming some sort of life master to me. I am the young, green, confused youth; he is the wise man helping me chill out.

So after a month in Spanish class, I can now say things like, “Melanie is an attorney. She is going to the store to buy a blue dress because she is going to a new restaurant with her boyfriend.” Now, if only I knew how to say, “I quit my job, left Chicago, and flew all the way to Europe to try to figure out my life – and it’s probably the best decision I’ve made.”

I’m almost there – we’re learning one of the passive tenses this week.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This is the second installment of Kristina Francisco’s “One-Way Ticket” column for venuszine.com. Visit venuszine.com every two weeks for the latest installment. You can also check out Kristina Francisco's personal blog at numberonehits.blogspot.com.