Learning Spanish is hard. Especially when thrust into a medical environment where you´ve just gotten your bearings in English and now have to read off a sheet to a Mayan descendent who may speak Spanish, but more likely speaks one of the 22 indigenous dialects of Guatemala. Fuck me.
I bumbled through my first clinical day scrambling for the first word to say. The program I´m with has some good folks running it, who are nice and forgiving (as are the patients), but who also make you jump in and speak. I screw up, they correct me. I screw up, they shake their heads. I screw up, they throw up their hands. But I got props at the end of the day for sticking it out.
Yesterday we were sitting in class learning about how to conjugate the eight verbs we need for medical Spanish. Despite my numerous degrees and sincere love of learning, I couldn´t even tell you how the hell to conjugate verbs in English. Thanks, public school. I´m keeping my nose to the proverbial grindstone, and hopefully will come out of this a better lady. For now, I´m tired, I´ve had a headache for two days, and I´m sick of dealing with both hippies and fundamentalist Christians (only in Guatemala).
I´ll put pics up as soon as I can. I´ve been using public computers since we got here, but I´ve been taking them faithfully.
Stoked to hear from yinz!
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It's a sad fact but the hippies and the fundies usually are the ones who make it happen and live up to a lot of the babble about helping others. It's ok not to want to want to deal with fundamentalists or hippies anywhere.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to hear that it's tough to communicate. That must make you feel isolated but it will get better bit by bit. I'm sure everybody there is excited that you're there but it's tough to be far away from the familiar. Hang in there and keep blogging. It's fun to read -- A
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