New Experiences – Learning Spanish

Learning Spanish has taken effort. I have to give thanks to Mrs. McCarthy who got me started with Spanish way back in my teens. However, I didn’t have the opportunity to use the language much.

On vacations to the DR, we got by on the little spanish we remembered. But language can be a barrier. Knowing we were going to be living in the DR, our family spent the last year re-learning spanish. We took individual lessons almost daily, and at times it felt like a burden. There were so many competing needs- work, family time, exercise, etc. I personally sometimes felt I was regressing rather than learning.

I feared talking with my Spanish speaking coworkers Nelson and Pedro (though they were so patient with my efforts to try to speak). I also wanted to be able to communicate with the Spanish speaking boat captains and crew in the aquaculture industry- but failed.

I kept trying. We kept trying. One of our close friends (Dan) inspired us with his efforts to learn- he is now fluent. And more friends, seeing what we were attempting, also started learning. It started to feel like fun rather than work.

It wasn’t easy though. It took a lot of time. I wanted to give up, many times.

But here I am now having conversations that are deeper and more meaningful with people we’ve known for a long time, but until recently, just didn’t have the ability to converse with.

What’s better is that I’m sitting here in a beach chair watching my daughter converse (in Spanish) with her friend Yameiri. They are playing in the waves and there is no language barrier. It’s a beautiful thing. And so it was all worth it after all.

Thank you Mrs. McCarthy.