I should probably start this post off by saying that my Spanish used to be a lot better. In high school, I had four years of Spanish daily with a really great teacher who emphasized proper grammar and conversational skills (opposite ends of the spectrum for a lot of language students). But after three years of virtually no practice, my Spanish is pretty rusty. So rusty, in fact, that I tested into Intermediate Spanish here in Peru, even though I tested into Advanced during my freshman year at Northeastern.
It’s been a very long and challenging journey trying to get my Spanish back to where it was. It started on Day 2, when my lost luggage (shout out to Miami Airport for unnecessarily complicating my life!) finally arrived. Like almost all homes in Lima, my host family’s home is gated. So while the airline employee stood on the street in the rain (okay, it was actually mist because this is Lima and actual rain doesn’t really happen, but I’m going to say rain for the benefit of my story), I just had to unlock the huge wooden door to let him in. Except, I couldn’t get the key to work. Embarrassing. I struggled for a solid 3 minutes, with Mr. Luggage standing on the other side of the door. After shouting out several lo sientos, I finally gave up and called my host mom for help. My host parents were at their niece’s wedding, and my call interrupted the ceremony. Great. After explaining to my host mom the situation (mi maleta está aquí, pero no puedo abrir la puerta—la llave no funciona para mí!), she told me empuja. Huh? Empuja! Shannon, empuja la puerta! Empuja empuja empuja. Needless to say, I had noooo idea what this word meant. She hung up abruptly, and a few minutes later, her very ill son came to the door, turned the key, pushed—and voila! My luggage. The verb empujar—to push—will forever be stuck in my memory from this awfully embarrassing experience. Not only did I not know a very basic word printed on just about every door in public settings, I interrupted a wedding, made a sick housemate get out of bed, and left a stranger with my luggage standing in the rain for 15 minutes. Leave it to the gringa.
Unfortunately, my embarrassing language struggles continued—mixing up the word “fat” with “baseball cap” (yeah, the fat did a great job of keeping me out of the sun!), mixing up the word “seated” with “cents” (asking the bus drive for 50 seateds instead of 50 cents—classic gringa move), and attempting to use profanity but just sounding like an idiot.
Despite my perpetual ride on the struggle bus, most Peruvians are really nice and patient when I can’t think of the word I want. Yesterday I wanted to buy bobby pins, and didn’t know the word for “barrettes”. So I just kept asking for “you know, those little things you use to arrange your hair.” Body language and a smile are indispensable. I learned this especially with my Brazilian housemate. We’re both learning Spanish, and neither of us speak the other’s native language, so communication is hard. Despite this, she’s become one of my closest friends here, and we’re always going back and forth about boys or school, with dictionary in hand. Sometimes you don’t need perfect spoken language to communicate. Broken Spanish, body language, and dramatic flair can say it all.
Language miscommunication has been a big source of learning, laughter, and bonding for me here. A lot of my friends here are not native English speakers, though that’s the language we depend on to communicate. So sometimes we have hilarious miscommunications. Especially with the French girls. They’re both really expressive and talkative, and sometimes they’ll mess up one word—and their whole meaning is lost. Or sometimes, they’ll misinterpret some of my college jargon and think I’m saying something wayyyyy off from what I meant. In fact, just yesterday at school, my friend asked me if I “have wifi here,” but I thought she asked if I “have a boyfriend here” because of her accent. Needless to say, it sparked a pretty funny conversation.
Language is also such a huge aspect of a country’s culture. The German language is so precise—there’s a word for everything. And French is much more fluid. Spanish is emotional and passionate, but less precise and exact. My entire experience with languages here (with Peruvians and Europeans alike) has been so fun and eye-opening. It’s the sort of thing I would’ve never realized if I hadn’t come abroad. I wish learning foreign languages was more emphasized in the American schooling system. It teaches you to think in a different way, to experience a slice of another culture without even travelling to another country
