In the meantime, I´m catching up on a bit of schoolwork, some serious NAIMUN crunch work (hi Nora and Lopes, hope you´re reading!!), and blog posts about the past two weekends. Checking email for the first time since Monday brought some really sweet emails from friends that I didn´t know I needed so much until I read them. I´m going to share some wise words on language immersion from my dear friend Will that certainly inspired me:
"We've got two options: look a bit like a dork and do our best to use Spanish even if we're self conscious OR, herd around with English speakers and communicate perfectly well. We're sacrificing the ability to be understood, so that we can understand a new language...
...which is so true, and definitely something I´m going to try to keep in mind in the coming weeks. Making local friends has definitely been the biggest challenge for me. Granted, USFQers have as a general rule gone to school and grown up together, and breaking into their little microcosms is about as tough as it would be in a high school setting (read: really freaking tough). However, that´s no excuse for giving up and hanging out with Americans all the time, especially when it´s your language acquisition at stake. For a number of reasons my catchphrase here has already become "Awkward is my life," so I guess I´m just going to have to embrace that as I try to, awkwardly, make myself some friends.
It's tough to break in, but you can do it! I mean, hey, if you came up to me I'd definitely be your friend.
ReplyDeleteAnd please feel better, get rest, and then go have fun and vacation some more.