Will it be rare, medium or well done?

I am now one week away from my Spanish exam. I feel like I am well done but sometimes the inside of my Spanish is still pink & mushy. Just don't put the fork in too far. These are cuy (guinea pig) being roasted in Ecuador.

Probably the turning point in my feeling more confident in Spanish was going on the immersion trip to Ecuador. I can understand way more Spanish than I could before. When I got back from Ecuador and turned on CNN Espanol it was like night and day compared to what I could understand before I went. I have been back at FSI four weeks now. I still can't say I feel much different but at the same time I know so much more Spanish than before. When I look back through some of my old notebooks and the old Nuevas Rutas libros I can really see how far I have come.

My learning consultant told me last week she thought I was at the 3 level and if I worked hard I could possibly get a 3+. That was probably the wrong thing to tell me, because this week my teacher said she thought my Spanish was a little worse. She said maybe I was too relaxed about it. The thing is, now I have kind of a "big picture" Spanish. I can understand and make myself understood but I cannot stop making little mistakes. For example, today I couldn't conjugate nosotros correctly in any tense. At the same time I know I realize I am making errors I am powerless to correct them. I can only think about one thing at a time. This means that I can either focus on vocabulary and keeping the words coming, or I can focus on noun/verb agreement and conjugations, but not both. That is why speaking Spanish requires so much concentration. You don't have to think about your grammar in your native language. It just either sounds right or it doesn't. Even weirder, I have caught myself saying strange things in English or mispronouncing English words. My poor brain is short-circuiting.

This is probably some milestone or dire sign of deterioration in language learning. Possibly I am going to stay monolingual but in Spanglish. My Spanish is improving while my English suffers. This is a strange phenomenon that all of us have noticed in our language classes. We can also understand each other's Spanish so much more easily than our teacher's Spanish. Even when we make up words, which turn out to be false cognates (false friends, as they say in Spanish--e.g. experienzar, militario), our classmates can totally understand us.

Today two of my good friends at FSI took their Spanish exams. One passed and one didn't. I really couldn't tell you why because they both seemed at similar levels. It had to be nerves or just the topics they were asked to speak about, because both of them were very prepared. Maybe the tester just stuck the fork in too far.

Language Immersion

This picture is from Baños, Ecuador. It's the waterfall there called "El Pailon del Diablo," the devil's frypan. It's a metaphor for the rush of Spanish I got while I was there. I had my own teacher 4 hours a day, which was heavenly. I stayed with an Ecuadorian family in Quito 2 weeks, and then spent one week at Puerto Lopez. Taking language classes here is different. There is just a different flow to the class when you are the only student.

I have just returned from these 3 weeks of language immersion training in Ecuador. Vale la pena (It was worth it). Some of the language programs at the Foreign Service Institute allow you to take a language immersion trip. You pay all your own expenses, but it counts as time spent at work so you don't have to take leave. I would recommend it to anyone. It was worthwhile if only to change up the pace after 4 months at the Foreign Service Institute.

It's hard to measure how much my Spanish improved, but at least I feel better about it. The highlight was when I checked in at the airport to leave and started talking to the lady in Spanish, and handed over my passport, and she asked me if I preferred English or Spanish and she complimented me on my Spanish! I was quickly brought back down to earth in Miami. The customs officer asked me what I had done on my trip and I told him taking Spanish classes. I could barely understand him in Spanish. The Ecuadorians have a much clearer and plainer accent.

Four more weeks until my suggested end of Spanish. I hear about half of the people don't pass the first try and have to take an additional four weeks of training.