spanglish

I suppose the really good thing about having been here for almost 6 months is that I now forget what language I had a certain conversation in, or what language that article was in, or if we had subtitles on that film... That's not to say that I am 100% fluent; not by any means. But when I compare how I feel (or how I lack of feel) now, to how I did when I first arrived, it is seriously incredible.

I had a constant headache for a week straight when I first arrived just listening to Spanish all day. Watching television was absolutely no way to relax either, and unless I was paying someone 150% of my attention I had no idea what they were talking about. Making out words or themes in conversations that I wasn't involved in (background noise type stuff) was absolutely impossible.

It's definitely not as hard in church type situations where for instance you might split into groups to read a passage and think about certain things to do with it. In that scenario there is a context and you know that everything you hear will have something to do with what's in front of you. But just having a chat with someone can be a completely different matter. They can be telling you about their sister in Hawaii and then suddenly be reminded of this funny thing they saw on TV where this cat licked a tennis ball and chased it around the supermarket while dancing like a small monkey. In that situation, you might be screwed. Not only is your friend not so great a conversationist, but, oh wait hey, you realised YOU SUCK AT SPANISH.

When we went to Argentina last week I had a slight flashback as a guy in the hostel started chatting to me in [Argentinian] Spanish about his views on life [standard banter] and being t-total and consumerism and addiction etc. It was SO much easier to understand than Chilean Spanish -
a) because Chileans speak bad Spanish, and b) because, and I think this really could be true, once you understand Chilean Spanish you'll understand any accent the Spanish speaking world can throw at you.
- but it still brought back those memories of concentrating so hard just to work out the words that are actually coming at you, let along processing the deep philosophical/religious/life story point of the conversation. And then replying.

So, in short, I'm feeling super grateful that I can actually follow a conversation and reply with what I want to say without having a literal brainache. I am getting better at understanding jokes now too, which I take to be a very good sign!

¿Cachai?