Adiós, San Miguel!

I'M DONE WITH SPANISH SCHOOL!!!  Yesterday was my last day of class, and I couldn't be happier that it's finally over.  Four weeks might as well have been four months and I'm so ready to go home tomorrow.  I miss my dorky little family like you wouldn't believe.  If I ever do something like this again (right now that seems highly unlikely) I would rent a house for a month and drag Ty and Bloo along with me.  Having someone to study/vent with and to explore San Miguel with these past few weeks would have been a game-charger in my bad attitude department.  School was over-whelming, but feeling lonely and homesick for a month was miserable.  

It's a super special town... I just hope I don't associate it with stress from here on out! 

The part I liked about school the least were the daily "compositions" we had to write every night, which were basically a 2-3 paragraph short story incorporating the grammatical elements we learned the previous day.  Every morning we'd each read our composition aloud to the class as our teacher talked over us the entire time correcting every tiny error, every forgotten "de, le, a, por," every mispronounced syllable, and every wrong conjugation.  It may sound helpful, but actually it just felt really belittling to all of us.  His whole teaching "style" was like that... Super picky, never complimentary and condescending.

It wasn't a motivating environment for yours truly.  He also wasted a lot of time on tangents and beating a (pointless) topic to death and then under-explaining things that were actually important because we ran out of time... He once went on a 20-minute rant about all the different ways to order a cup of coffee and which ways were more efficient.  (Uh, pretty sure I can say "Café, por favor," and a cup of coffee will magically appear.)  And another time, while I was reading an excerpt from a book, he kept talking over me to correct my CADENCE.  That's right.  He didn't even like my tempo or inflections.  We couldn't do anything right ever.  I rolled my eyes extra hard that day.    

For our last assignment...the intermediate students had to give a 20-30 minute "speech" (basically just talking about a topic of our choice in bad Spanish) and then we had to answer questions from the teacher and other students for another 20-30 minutes.  Mind you...we were given a whopping 20 hours notice for this "final project" so writing a speech and memorizing it wasn't gonna happen.  I made a feeble attempt at jotting some thoughts down on paper Thursday night before shrugging my shoulders and deciding to just "wing it" the next day.  Either I can speak Spanish, or I can't.  Besides...what's he gonna do, fail me?

Friday morning before class I was chatting with my classmates, who all seemed super nervous as well as shocked when I told them I didn't have a topic in mind yet... They each had written out outlines of their talks (even though we weren't allowed to look at notes or have anything on our desk when our turn came)... I knew I was going third, so while the first and second students spoke, I decided to just talk about all the times I've embarrassed myself while struggling to learn Spanish over the last two years.  Making groups of people laugh (especially when I'm nervous or uncomfortable) has always been something I'm good at, and turns out I'm a stand-up comedian in Spanish too.  Duh.  I had the whole room laughing, even my stick-in-the-mud teacher couldn't help but let out a few smirks.  

I told them about the many times I've confused the word for "embarrassed" (avergonzado) for the word "pregnant" (embarazada)... I told them about the time I thought a man was complimenting my hair (cabello) and I giggled and thanked him like an uber nerd, and then someone told me he was asking me if I liked horses (caballos.)  Face palm.  I told them about the time I ordered sandy tacos (tacos de arena) instead of flour tacos (tacos de harina)...and my many other Gringo failures.  

After my 30 minutes of story-telling were up, people asked me questions about what I intend to do to continue to learn Spanish, my teacher asked how my impression of Mexico has changed since moving here, etc.  It was actually pretty fun and although I messed up a lot (whoever decided Spanish needed TWO past tense conjugations is real jerk) I was understood well enough and if we were actually being graded, I'm sure I would have passed with flying colors.  Or at least that's what I'm telling myself.  But whatever.  

Overall, I don't know if I'm much better at Spanish after all this... If anything I speak much slower now, because now I know 20+ conjugations of every verb instead of just 4-5 and so I overthink every little thing I say.  Again, why there are two past tenses in Spanish, is beyond me!!

Before I came here, I was only speaking in the present tense and using "time" words (yesterday, this morning, next week, etc.) to help the person I was speaking to understand what I was trying (and failing) to say.  So, instead of saying "I went to the store yesterday."  It was more like... "I go to the store yesterday," because up until a few weeks ago I didn't know past tenses.  (Even just typing that grammatically incorrect sentence makes my perfectionist nerd brain cringe.)  

Also... My brain feels like a jumbled hot mess tornado of English and Spanish words right now.  For weeks, I've been flip-flopping between the two languages usually mid-sentence... I wrote out a list the other day of things I want to get done when I get back to Jardin, and only after I was finished writing it did I notice that half of it was in Spanish and half was in English.  Some examples: 

• Finish painting the baño en Serena
• Escribir a new Welcome Letter para los huéspedes 
• Comprar more artwork for Santiago
• Replace low-quality fotos en línea 
• Update all calendarios

You get the point.  Talk about Spanglish. 

I'll also read something in passing (a product label, or a sign or something on the street) and about 10 seconds later it dawns on me that I don't know if I was reading Spanish or English.  I read it subconsciously and understood what it said, but I don't know which language it was thinking back on it.  It's a very strange phenomenon and I don't know how people who speak multiple languages keep them all separate in their heads.  

I think it'll take getting back into my old routine and being around my usual Spanish-speakers to really know if I'm any better at understanding and speaking the language.  Amazingly, I've been able to understand at least 95% of what the instructors have been saying since I arrived here (they speak almost zero English in class) which feels super encouraging.  Granted, they're language teachers, so they speak clearly and don't use slang, etc. but damn!  I actually understand Spanish!  Now if only I could get the gardener to slow down and stop mumbling, I'd be all set.  In 9 months, I've understood almost nothing of what he has said to me.  Fun. 

Yesterday, after classes were over, we had our last "cooking class" as a group...which is basically just the school director cooking us a free lunch.  Score.  Yesterday we (she) made super tasty Chile Rellano and we all sat around the dining table and talked about going home.  None of us are perfect Spanish speakers, but it was neat to see how far everyone has come since our first group meal.  And by "far" I mean slightly less terrible, of course.   

Since today is my last full day in San Miguel, I decided to play tourist a bit and explore new parts of the city I haven't seen yet.  And I think I'm going to swing by the Artisan Market to pick up a few graduation gifts for myself.  Sorry, babe.  (Except not sorry.) 

Tomorrow afternoon I'm getting picked up by a shuttle company and making the 1.5 hour trek to the León Airport and then taking a quick 55-minute flight to my beloved Bahía de Banderas where my sweet man-boy and dorky pups will be waiting for me with open arms and lots of kisses.  (Right, babe?)  And then I'll proceed to melt my friggen face off and make whiny Facebook posts about how hot it is.  Because, duh.

Adiós, San Miguel!