Speaking Spanglish... I mean Spanish

My Journey of learning Spanish in Mexico while learning a new culture, country, city, food, career, things about myself, friends and so much more in 9 months.

Learning Spanish is not just about learning a language but understanding a group of people and how they communicate. English and Spanish do not translate word for word and don't try or you will have many embarrassing stories like me! LOL You have to immerse yourself in the culture and communication of the people in order to truly learn the language. So here is my story about my Spanish journey.

It started with going to language school, what did it look like? Let me tell you. I had two different days twice a week Day A and B, Monday through Thursday. My schedule was grammar every day, then on day A was vocab and phonetics and day B was verbs and laboratory. I had homework for each class every day including questions I had to ask someone in Spanish and write the answers in Spanish. I also had whole pages of English sentences formed into a story I had to translate into Spanish. Within each day I had to repeat Spanish words out loud, use them in sentences, and then I was quizzed on what I learned. Everything was in Spanish except explaining rules or when I needed clarity on something important. Every week as well I needed to create a bible study, read the bible in Spanish and summarize an article from a magazine in Spanish. I also had to write and present my testimony in Spanish at the end of my school. My teachers were amazing and gave me tons of grace. They were very practical, funny, and loved to give me a hard time because if you know me I like to mess around. LOL

One of the really cool things about my language learning process was the people involved outside of school. My community was super supportive and gave me so much grace with words, grammar, and pronunciation. Of course, many jokes were made but there was so much love from them it helped me learn so much faster and feel accepted! Everyone here has such a servant heart and I experienced that for real with learning Spanish! The Mexican people are very very kind and have huge hearts for helping others. It wasn't just my community who gave me grace and helped me but strangers too!! People at the store, Uber drivers, waiters/waitresses, neighbors and so many more all extended a hand.

As I was learning Spanish I was also learning how to do life here, navigate the city, make new habits, understand the culture, figure out how to pay bills, find things I needed at stores and so on! I was taking on a lot all at once so at night I would be very tired, not so much physically but mentally. After 10 pm I was basically brain dead and couldn't speak or understand Spanish at all! People started to realize that and would notice me looking tired and say "it's after 10 he won't understand you anymore haha". But I never stopped trying or went to bed early, I continued to push forward and learn how to live here and adjust to all the changes. Like I said before I had a community who helped me a lot!

Speaking of being up late, here in the city life starts after 7 pm because that is when work is done for most people. So we stay up late, I mean most nights are midnight and on the weekends later of course. So this means we eat later too, tacos at 10 or 11 is very very normal. It took me a very long time to adjust to eating lunch after 3 pm and dinner after 9 pm. My body had to change so that I could feel healthy and have the energy needed, it was so weird but it did change and I have adapted to the eating times! One thing that never changed was coffee, I always need my coffee especially with learning Spanish LOL! I don't need anything fancy either, just give me the cheapest, blackest coffee you have and I'm good! The more my body became accustomed to the food, eating habits and sleep, the better my Spanish got as well! Crazy how that works!

A big part of learning Spanish was learning the common phrases and slang, which are good and which are not. (Like I said before Spanish doesn't translate word for word so we need to ask lots of questions and read noncommunication language too.) What to say that is polite and what we think is polite but isn’t. OH YES, I messed up many words/phrases that confused so many people and offended some too! LOL Not on purpose, it was just part of the learning process. But it is one of the most important parts because you need to think in the language and culture in order to communicate with the people your living with the best. When you memorize their phrases and understand the meaning it allows you to start naturally thinking in the language. The more you think in the language the faster you can be fluent! I am almost there!

Okay last but not least, accepting failure and learning from it quickly is so important when learning a new language. Being bold and just going for it will help anyone learn much faster. If you have a good community who can help you and extend grace then you will learn even faster! The Lord blessed me with boldness, accepting failure, and an amazing community! Spanish and I are finally best friends. ;)

PS: if you want any tips or tricks or books or apps to use let me know!