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August 09, 2008
Second Language
This is my second full day in Guadalajara and already I'm wishing that I lived here. Not that the city is that stupendous -- I covered all of the "must see" places in the travel book yesterday and found it to be your typical "churches and cheap crap for sale" routine. And not that the food is so ideally suited to my palate -- it's either too spicy for me or overcooked in a "this tourist will not get turista on my watch" kind of way.
No, the things that draws me to living here (aside from the scrumptious margaritas, which I am consuming in record number) is the language. After 7+ years of Spanish language lessons starting in 4th grade, I switched to German and basically forgot all of my original second language skills. Or so I thought. Turns out that I am -- if not fluent -- then at least proficient in Spanish.
I understand most of what's being said (point of fact: I could follow along with that horrid movie where Rob Schneider somehow gets animal parts transplanted into his body and he acts like a moron for the next 90 minutes when it was translated on television today), and I can even instantly come up with Spanish versions of almost every question I want to ask -- although "where is the bathroom", "do you have any books in English", and "this coffee is muy bueno" tend not to tax the mind unnecessarily.
I was briefly at this stage with my German (a summer of intensive lessons even had me dreaming in kindergarten-level Deutch), but when I go to Germany or Austria, it takes me about a week to get to this point of general "understanding-ness". Being able to slip into it so easily here in Mexico makes me want to live here long enough to see how far those 7 years of lessons could take me.
