¡Bienvenidas, Amigas!
September is here and I’m trying super duper hard to ignore the inevitable end of summer. So I’m drinking up the last bits of long days and warm nights with windows open and chirping crickets lulling me to sleep. It always breaks my heart a touch the last time I close my bedroom window at night and realize I won’t be sleeping with it open again for nine months. That hasn’t happened yet, but it’s about to.
The US of A still feels like a dumpster fire. It’s hard not to feel like we’ve become the playground bully, snatching the weak kid’s lunch simply because we can. I’m trying to stay informed, but not allow the news to spiral me into despair. I fail a lot at that goal. One thing that has helped is cutting back on social media to prevent ‘doom scrolling’. I set my iPhone settings to allow me one hour a day. After that, I am done. Instead of social media, I told Susan I spend more time on YouTube and she laughed saying, “is that much better?” Ummmm YES Susan, because YouTube is where I watch all my Spanish comprehension videos.
I’m always embarrassed to talk about learning Spanish later in life because half of you reading this are fluent in two languages (or more!), so I feel sooooo late to the game. But the number one feeling that I accepted five years ago when I picked up Spanish learning again was … embarrassment.
For example, recently I ran into a Mexican woman from my neighborhood in a nearby Mexican restaurant. I tried to have a convo in Spanish with her …. and then how dare she …. she corrected my Spanish. I used ‘tiempo’ to convey ‘One time I did this…” and she corrected me to say I should use ‘vez’, not tiempo. Good grief, I learned that 3 years ago and still I get it wrong sometimes, hence my embarrassment.
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