I started taking Spanish lessons this week, and it feels good! It feels good because it alleviates some of my guilt about not knowing the language here.

Yes, there is guilt. There doesn’t have to be, but for me, there is.

I’ve experienced it every time I’ve visited a new country where I couldn’t communicate in the native tongue (all three of them.) Even when I didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of knowing how to speak them, like Hungary and Poland, I sat down the bar from natives jealously listening in as they flippantly conversed with the bartenders. What were they saying? Were they telling jokes? Talking shit about me? I would never know.

Why? Partly because I’m a sensitive Sally. Mostly because I respect and love languages. And not being able to communicate at all – let alone eloquently – has been a bitter pill to swallow. It makes me want to keep my mouth shut, say the bare minimum so as not to reveal myself as a fraud.

Because of my language restrictions, most of the people I communicate with are bilingual. And once the luster of meeting someone with whom I can easily speak fades (OOOH! Someone I can talk to!) I wonder why they’ve learned English. What for? How long did they spend studying? Shouldn’t I at least uphold my half of the bargain by learning their native language?

¿Hablas español?

“Do you speak Spanish?” is one of the first questions students ask me when I introduce myself to them. I tell them no, which is fine.

As a native English speaker, I’m suppose to tell them no. Even if you DO speak perfect Spanish, you are encouraged to say ‘No, not a lick.’ The idea is that it will force the chicos to try to speak English with you, rather than asking all of their questions in Spanish and rehearsing lines in English.

But for me, it is not a farce. I am not masking my linguistic skills to improve their learning environment.  And that sucks.

The students ask how it’s possible. How can I live here, in Spain, without being able to speak the native language? I  shrug it off and say I don’t know. I tell them that I’m learning.

And I am. I’ve picked up the basics. I know how to say “Hi, I’m here to give English classes” to the doormen when I’m giving private lessons. I can navigate a grocery store exchange, order a coffee and say hello to my neighbors. The bare minimum. But that’s not enough to live on. It’s not enough to really engage.

I can’t tell people what I thought of cities I’ve visited beyond “It was beautiful.” I can’t ask what the economic conditions are, or if that drunk man was being honest when he said unemployment is extremely high. I have a hard time explaining where I stayed, or what I thought, or what I liked best.

So people never really get to know me. They don’t know what I’m thinking or how I’m actually feeling or what I’m passionate about. It’s all surface-level.

And likewise, I don’t know very much about them. I don’t want to skate along the upper-crust of this experience. I want to sink into it a little, and find out what’s going on underneath those first few layers of paella, sangria, flamenco and sunshine. Is that what it’s all about, or is that what tourists have reduced them to?

I never knew I wanted to learn Spanish. I passed on it in middle and high school because it’s what everyone was doing. And I wanted to do something different (like an idiot). But now here I am, 10 years later – and I’m DESPERATE to learn.

Chris’ mom even told us we can’t come back until we are fluent, so it looks like I’m not getting my stuff out of their garage until I can string together a few sentences.

“Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.” – Benny Franklin

As I head into the second half of this year as an English teacher, I am ready to also take my education seriously. If I’m going to expect my students to improve in their speaking abilities, I likewise need to seriously advance my own. Especially since they’re studying for something down the line, whether it’s travel or a business opportunity – and I’m learning to function right now.

I guess it dawned on me at the start of 2016 that the clock is ticking on my experience living abroad. And I sat down to seriously consider what I wanted to get out of it. Would I be OK with returning to the states with the same amount of Spanish you learn in 1A? Or would I regret not trying harder to learn?

It’s easy to put things off for another day. I’ll try talking to more people tomorrow after I practice in the privacy of my room tonight. I’ll watch a couple more episode of a show in Spanish to pick up some conversational words, and then I’ll be ready to sit down and practice with a native speaker. But I can do these things back home. You know what I won’t have back home? People from Spain.

I’m excited to learn Spanish for this experience now – so I can full immerse in the experience of living in Spain – but also for the future. I want really learn the language so I can perhaps return the favor down the road. If a Spanish speaker visits the United States and only knows enough English ‘to just get by,’ I’d hope that I could step in and help. Because unlike in Spain or Poland or Hungary, a bartender in the United States probably doesn’t speak any language besides English.