Is the Vacation Over?

Is the Vacation Over?



At what point does the honeymoon of a vacation end and the day-to-day grind of life begin? I suppose that I will always be a tourist here in Spain. I can’t imagine ever ceasing to be completely captivated by a narrow street in the old section of town, or a cool wrought iron balcony. The great food and wine that I drink no longer seems exotic or foreign, although I enjoy it more with each meal that I prepare. I have adopted the Spanish custom of making even the lightest, smallest snack a sort of culinary occasion. I can’t tell if I am changing or if I’m just reverting to the way that I used to live when I lived on the other side of the Mediterranean.

I know now that the language will continue to vex me for years and years. I can’t even guess how long it would take someone to be completely comfortable with the context or life here, the background, the cultural literacy necessary to understand everything going on around you. I don’t kid myself that I will speak Spanish like a native or fully grasp Spanish politics, at least not any time soon.

I can try, however. I plod along in the language, word by word. It very often seems completely hopeless when I look at the pages and pages of vocabulary words that I have written down and looked up in the dictionary. How can I ever remember all of these words? I think that perhaps I am too old to be doing this. I seem to remember that I was a lot better at digesting hundreds of vocabulary words when I studied during my college years. Everyone knows that it is easier to learn a language when you are young, preferably very young, like before you are 16 or 17. I missed boat one by at least a generation.

I started a new book in Spanish last night before I went to bed. This book is a work of Spanish journalism. Before I passed out I had plowed through almost 40 pages with only a minimal consultation with the dictionary. It amazes me how often I will look up a word and then immediately come across it again in another context. It is as if the entire language is a secret that is being revealed to me one word at a time. The act of reading becomes an exercise in which my glasses continually bring the pages into better focus.

My aural comprehension is on the same arc. I watched a Spanish movie last night. La Escopeta Nacional directed by the Luis G. Berlanga from Valencia. I have found that when I watch movies on my computer I have a much easier time understanding because the sound quality through the headphones is much better than television speakers. This movie is in Spanish and Catalan with subtitles. I am still only beginning to understand the nature of Catalan and Valencià, languages which seem to bring an almost schizophrenic nature to this part of the country, at least it seems that way to me. I haven’t formally begun to study Valencià but I can at least recognize it when I hear it now. I was going to say, “One word at a time and one language at a time,” but I will probably start learning some Valencià very soon. I certainly have enough time.

One of my favorite tools for learning Spanish is wordreference .This is an online dictionary which is the easiest and quickest to use. They also have a language forum where you can post questions on vocabulary and grammar. I usually get a response a few seconds after I post. This resource really saves a lot of time when you are reading. Plowing through a dictionary takes more time and if you only have a verb that has been conjugated you sometimes don’t know where to look. Wordreference accepts conjugated verbs and verbal nouns. You also do not need to even use the cursor as the page automatically brings you back to the search mode after you enter. Call it a lazy man’s jackpot or a lifesaver.