*I recommend playing this song as your read the rest...
It's a weird thing to live somewhere between two languages. I feel like it's something you can't really understand until you've been forced to do it yourself and even then people's experiences differ greatly. I've been here in Costa Rica for almost 2 years now and after coming with absolutely no Spanish a lot has changed.
I literally came here never having learned any Spanish. I had studied German in high school and again in college and even studied abroad in Germany and Austria. My German had gotten good (though please don't ask about it now). When I moved here, pretty much all I could say was "hola" and "gracias". To give you a better idea of how that affected everything here's something one of my first students said about a year after I came (in Spanish of course): "Lindsey, I didn't like you when I first met you. You didn't say anything to us. I mean...I guess you couldn't. But now I love you!"
It was incredibly challenging. It took many headaches and many confusions and blank stares. I like to tell people that language learning is both humbling and humiliating. Now I've come a long way (still have a long way to go of course as well). I'm still living in a community that speaks a language that is not the one I am most comfortable with. It's not the language that I've known all my life, lived in, and studied in for years. It's not the one I've sung in or read in or prayed in.
But now that my life is in this other language, I've come to see that I want and maybe even need many of those more "optional" areas to be in Spanish also. I'm trying (slowly) to read a book in Spanish. I've come to pray some in Spanish. And I've come to love worshipping the Lord through song in Spanish (at times).
Yet there's always a balance I need and an in between can often be better for me and my soul. That's one of the reasons that songs (like the one above), movies, and even conversations that are in both Spanish and English in some form or another have been the most positive for me and even something I've found myself craving for. I can tell you, it's a weird thing as I never had any desire to learn Spanish but God has brought me so far not only in my ability but also in my desire and even joy in speaking it. He's good!
(Hope you enjoyed my little ramble about something I've been thinking about a lot recently.)
Thanks for reading, friends!
I literally came here never having learned any Spanish. I had studied German in high school and again in college and even studied abroad in Germany and Austria. My German had gotten good (though please don't ask about it now). When I moved here, pretty much all I could say was "hola" and "gracias". To give you a better idea of how that affected everything here's something one of my first students said about a year after I came (in Spanish of course): "Lindsey, I didn't like you when I first met you. You didn't say anything to us. I mean...I guess you couldn't. But now I love you!"
It was incredibly challenging. It took many headaches and many confusions and blank stares. I like to tell people that language learning is both humbling and humiliating. Now I've come a long way (still have a long way to go of course as well). I'm still living in a community that speaks a language that is not the one I am most comfortable with. It's not the language that I've known all my life, lived in, and studied in for years. It's not the one I've sung in or read in or prayed in.
But now that my life is in this other language, I've come to see that I want and maybe even need many of those more "optional" areas to be in Spanish also. I'm trying (slowly) to read a book in Spanish. I've come to pray some in Spanish. And I've come to love worshipping the Lord through song in Spanish (at times).
Yet there's always a balance I need and an in between can often be better for me and my soul. That's one of the reasons that songs (like the one above), movies, and even conversations that are in both Spanish and English in some form or another have been the most positive for me and even something I've found myself craving for. I can tell you, it's a weird thing as I never had any desire to learn Spanish but God has brought me so far not only in my ability but also in my desire and even joy in speaking it. He's good!
(Hope you enjoyed my little ramble about something I've been thinking about a lot recently.)
Thanks for reading, friends!
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