Brother Todd and I have agreed to make standing Skype appointments to speak Spanish on Monday and Friday mornings. I was amazed at how hard it was to speak Spanish for a half-hour after months away without practice, and it’s no less amazing how much easier it was the second and third times. It also looks like I’m going to make my first Club Ñ meeting, which is the free gathering on Tuesdays and Wednesdays hosted by the university’s Spanish department.

Spanish is like crack for me: the more I get, the more I want. Part of me wants to try and swing another Guatemala immersion trip in August. A bigger part of me wants to just chuck it all in and move there for good.

My vocabulary is probably around 2000 words, I can use around twelve different verb tenses comfortably, and I’ve got a decent grip on grammar. As long as a Spanish speaker is willing to come down a couple rungs on the language ladder, I can speak with just about anybody on most topics. Without hardcore immersion, that’s about as far as you can get.

But a notable exception was the cashier at the pizza joint in San Jose who refused to A) slow down, B) use common words, C) speak while facing me, and D) enunciate. But I want that next step, the one where you can chat up the cashier at the pizza counter or read a book without running for a dictionary every two seconds. That’s a lot harder to come by.

I attended a craft talk by one of the people who is interviewing for the fiction position in our program. His writing would be categorized as magic realism/fabulism/not-realism, and his academic interests are in Latin American and Native American lit even though he’s a white guy who grew up in the Midwest.

If our department doesn’t hire him, I might see if he’d be willing to adopt me. Seriously, the fact that he’s would probably be the perfect faculty member for me is enough to convince me that we won’t get him.

Current Mood: Feh To Most Things |
Currently Listening To – Uncle Tupelo – “March 16-20, 1992″