I don't usually wait until Sunday to post. Oops. It's because on Friday, my normal blog writing day, I got home later than usual from my internship because I stayed after to continue working on the (super American and súper chulo) English Corner bulletin board at my internship, then I walked home really slowly talking to Genisis, Isis, and their really cool host brother, which then made me eat lunch later, which made me take my "Friday afternoon siesta" way later than normal, meaning I woke up later than normal, and then I tried to write my blog, but I had super writer's block, and then I went out to eat and didn't get back home until like midnightish, so, point of this long run-on sentence: there was just no blog writing happening on Friday.
Now that I've had a couple extra days to ponder what I should write about this week, I have decided to write about my efforts to get better at speaking Spanish. I had another idea yesterday while we were on the bus back from Ronda, but I don't remember what it was, so I guess it wasn't that good.
So this week, while really normal and kinda boring (giving me nothing really interesting to write about), I actually put some decent effort into improving my Spanish. Like, more effort than normal.
First, on Tuesday, I bought a book to read for fun (en español, obviamente). I haven't started it...I've been busy, okay? I have 13 hours of internship plus 20 hours of classes each week, plus homework, and we had a JYS excursion yesterday. But anyway, I plan on starting it tonight. I also plan on reading it out loud to practice my reading fluency, because let me tell you, when I read en voz alta in Spanish, I literally read like a 3rd grader. It's awful and makes me feel illiterate. You think I'm making that up? Nope. I was observing 3rd grade class the other day, and this girl was reading really slowly to sound out words, taking it one word at a time, and she even used her finger to guide her along the page. I felt like this when I realized I read just like her:
This has got to change. I took the first step to change yesterday on the way home from Ronda. On the bus, Isis and I read out loud in Spanish for a while from a book she had, and I think that was a good start. Her reading out loud skills are almost as bad as mine (she reads faster than me, but she likes to add in random letters that don't exist, while I read slowly and repeat a bunch of words like 3 times to get them right), so we are both riding the same boat of embarrassment.
Another thing I've been working on this week is pronouncing the letters "d" and "r." According to my friend, Álvaro, I have been pronouncing them incorrectly...ugh. Luckily, he's like some kind of Spanish pronunciation genius (well...he is Spanish), but he made it so easy for me to learn how to say them the right way. Now, I just have to remember to change my habit of saying everything the wrong way, because that's a good 6 years of pronouncing things wrong to suddenly have to change everything up like that.
So for the past like two days, I've basically been spending random free time just pronouncing different words with the letters "d" and "r" in them. Like, I'll be walking down the street whispering nonsense to myself in Spanish, and the nonsense goes something like this: Todos los días mis dedos tienen perros en carros y no puedo creer que hay ciudades en el mundo, which translates to: Everyday my fingers have dogs in carts and I can't believe that they are cities in the world. I try not to do this unless I'm not near anyone so random people don't think I'm insane. It really looks like I'm losing my mind when I whisper this nonsense to myself, but I'm really just trying to figure out this whole pronunciation thing and say a bunch of words with "r" and "d" in them.
Another thing I'm doing is trying to listen to more music in Spanish. I'm totally guilty of spending these past two months in Spain listening mainly to only music in English. I'm super picky with music, and I just don't know who even to start with when it comes to Spanish music...but my Spanish Spotify playlist is slowly growing, and I'm definitely going to try to listen to it a lot more. Here's a pretty good song I found yesterday. It's still not really like the music I listen to in English, but I guess I'll live:
Also, I am making a bigger effort to talk to Spaniards. If I go into a store, I'll ask someone a question about one of their products even if I don't care about it. I just want to try to understand them and talk to them. Usually they're pretty nice, so it's super easy to strike up a conversation with them. Plus, I'm trying to make a better effort to spend time with more Spaniards as well. And when I'm home, I have been trying to talk to my host mom a lot more, too. I definitely can tell our conversations are growing from where they were when I first got here. Last night we watching the news, and some story came on about these weird caskets that like played music and had animal print inside, and so we just talked about how ridiculous that was, and then we started talking about life insurance? What even...but I can't see myself having a conversation about life insurance two months ago. I definitely know a lot more vocabulary now, but not enough...at least it's always growing!
So yeah, I'm going to try to keep this stuff up. I guess I'm slowly taking these baby steps, and they'll get me somewhere eventually. We'll see. For now, I just have to keep trying!
