Village Idiot

The best news I have to share is that I no longer come home to an empty house. I live in a new apartment now, with a woman named Fina, and she has been a dream. The secretary at school told me she knew of someone looking for a roommate, so I got in touch with her just shy of immediately. We get along great, and she has a wealth of patience with me and my lacking vocabulary.

On my way out to the grocery store yesterday, I asked Fina if she needed anything. She asked for 'ciruelas,' which was a totally foreign word to me. I stared blankly, so she said they were "para el baño," or for the bathroom. Okay, so our bathroom is hands-down the best smelling part of the apartment. It's like stepping off the plane in Hawaii in there. Without a clue as to how it retains that scent, I asked if the ciruelas were for the smell, waving my hand in front of my face. I was thinking she whipped up some kind concoction to keep that holy room fresh, but I was wrong. (I noticed a Febreeze plug-in later.) She did her best to not look at me like I was a prize idiot, and said, "No, son para hacer caca." Things that help you take a shit. Then I got it: prunes. She wanted me to pick up some prunes. Just one example of the enormous obstacles I tackle every day.

I had lunch at my coordinator's house last week, where I met Manolo's (my coordinator's husband) sister and her husband who live in Córdoba. I spent most of the meal asking questions about everyone's recent vacation, pretty much opening up the conversation to topics that had already been discussed, but that my keen ears hadn't been able to pick up the first time around. Clara, my coordinator's daughter, was talking about her trip to Granada and how they had stayed in a house in the mountains outside of the city. About five minutes later, I asked her where they stayed in Granada, and realized, too late, that she was repeating herself.

While sipping coffee after our meal, Manolo's brother-in-law asked me what I thought was "How is life in Andalucía?" I was confused by this, because his wife had asked me a similar question at the table a little while earlier, and I had said I was very content with life in the south of Spain. So, as I ramble on in response to his question, everyone seems a little baffled, and Marú (my coordinator) waits until I get to the end of a cookie-cutter reply about how I love Andalucía to tell me what he'd really asked. Correction: "How was I doing with the language in Andalucía?" As if he even needed an answer after that, I said it was a bit of a struggle for me, that every person's accent provides a distinct challenge. We all laughed a little and then Manolo leans over to tell me that I remind him of his old, deaf father; I absorb small bits and pieces of conversation, and when someone addresses me directly, I blather on about a different topic that has little to no relevance. I gotta say, it's a pretty fair assessment. Most days I feel like a ninety-year-old battling with dementia.

At times when I can hardly form a clear thought, I become all too-aware of the plea in a person's eyes, begging me to just spit out something--anything--coherent. A good day is when I have two or three interactions where I come off with just a little bit of grace. Someone giving me a compliment on my Spanish can be encouraging, but it's best when both parties have something to laugh about. Immersing oneself in a language is totally fucking absurd. There is plenty to laugh at.

One of the girls I give English lessons to harasses me constantly about my clumsy Spanish. Instead of shooting back about her heinous pronunciation, I have to laugh at myself so that she can follow my example as we stumble through our respective second languages together. You might say we see each other as equals now. Which, obviously, makes her my new best friend. She is nine, I am twenty-two, and her parents pay me to come over and, essentially, play for two hours a week.

This brings me to my final conclusion: I am an awful teacher. Luckily, I am a good enough student to recognize that now, rather than, say, ten years from now, fully credentialed, while teaching PEMDAS to a room full of sixth-graders. I guess I'll continue to parade on in blissful ignorance of my life's calling for... ever.