*this blog is a continuation of of my previous one. To understand what’s going on go and read that one first*
As we got into Honduras i started to really enjoy Latin American culture. I also noticed that we tend to lump all of this area in the world as one place because they all speak Spanish. But this is so wrong because I had already began to notice how different Honduras was compared to Nicaragua.
That month my team stayed with different host families. My host family the Seville’s were the kindest and most hospital people I have ever met.
Nubia and Dali spoke some English and they could communicate a lot of things, but we ended up using a good bit of google translate to make things easier when we had long talks.
It turned out though that Nubia and her son josh also were using duo lingo to practice and learn English! There were a few nights where we would sit and explain to each other why things were a certain for our language.
Nubia was also a teacher some years ago and she was so excited to try and teach me Spanish. She in more ways than this was an answer to a prayer.
I wanted to have a need, drive, and desire to learn this language. So he puts me with someone that not only wants to teach me theirs but also learn mine!
I was finally able to have small conversations and I was able to a practice this a few times going to church and also at our ministries.
My teammate Claudia got sick for a few days and I was the the only other person that could speak any Spanish on my team. I now, along with google translate, was the translator those days. I was scared that something would go wrong. Even though most of our work didn’t require much talking. We did need to ask simple questions like how, where, when, what, and why for the manual labor projects we did.
I was also able to finally have small get to know you conversations past my name is, how old are you, etc. I could now ask if people like what they are doing and what are their plans for the future, school, work, marriage.
This was a month where I constantly was using Spanish at ministry and even at home. I continually surprised the people I stayed with as they would be asking each other a question in Spanish to then ask us and I would answer them in Spanish.
Like one day someone was asking if we had any laundry that needed to be washed. And I just piped up and said “si, nosotros tenemos sucia topas”. Which translates to yes we have dirty clothes.
I wasn’t shocked at first but it became clear that my ear was able to hear Spanish when not even paying direct attention. I don’t understand a lot of the words but context clues and words that are similar to English are easy to pick out and learn very fast.
All this being said I was practicing my written Spanish daily and trying to use all the words I learned every day. Which it’s interesting to how to talk about tables, walls, crabs, colors, and using we, our, and they in conversation.
But the desire was there and I was glad to be a help to my team but also to be able to communicate and hear about people’s lives.
I have so many stories from this month it will take a lifetime to tell. But how I was being pushed out of my comfort zone and into some thing I had previously hated was crazy. Spanish was no longer just something I needed to learn to make life easier.
Spanish became soemthing I wanted to learn.
