Communicating

Communicating can be difficult in whatever language. Sometimes, there is even miscommunication between two speakers of a language. I can definitely communicate much better in Spanish now than when I first arrived in Spain. I remember when I first got off the airplane and had to enter Spanish mode in Madrid. Trying to find where to buy a bus ticket was my first complication. I spent an hour in the Madrid airport trying to find my way to get to Huelva. Now I can laugh about the experience, and all of the misfortunes upon first arriving.

Two months later, sometimes I feel like my Spanish itself is getting worse, even if I can communicate better. Sometime I just cannot get my tongue to let go of the words. They aren’t hard words to pronounce. They just won’t come out. It has happened more than once. It will happen again. (O.K. sorry for the slight movie referencing line there.)

I still have some problems when it comes to important tasks, but general, everyday tasks such as going to a restaurant or a store are fairly simple. But it just seems a little odd I can communicate better when I feel my Spanish is getting worse. I don’t know, maybe I am just becoming more aware of my mistakes? Especially considering a lot of what I notice is my pronunciation of words.

With every adventure I grow to enjoy Spain even more. Now that I am able to talk to some of the locals during the week, be it at church or at the bar during language exchange, things have greatly improved. I am much happier in Spain. The weekends are still hard because I haven’t made any real close friends to do things with. And I probably won’t have what I am so used to from college—a group of five or six to spend time with. My Spanish isn’t quite that good—by that I mean when there are more than three people in a group speaking Spanish, my comprehension drops drastically.  

I don’t expect to improve my Spanish much in the next couple of days. Where I am traveling, I will hear much more Catalan than Castellano. Barcelona is in the autonomous region of Cataluña. But I will be speaking mostly if not only Spanish…Or at least my version of Spanish where I make up words hoping they are cognates (words that are very similar in English and Spanish, such as Aventura).