fin

i completed my spanish class!

in my head the graduation music is playing right now (though, really, i think it's the Olympic's music).
my professor even gave me a certificate.

did it help? am i more fluent? i dunno.

yesterday i sat in class, and i swear, i didn't understand a word. i couldn't have written an akward, classroom scene as good as this: the teacher smiling and looking at me as she spoke. me thinking, please don't call on me. please don't call on me. the next word out of her mouth: Corrie?

GARH!

how is it possible to de-improve at something? (i'm sure there is an actual word that describes de-improving, but apparently my english is failing me, too). i began the class with such happy promise. yesterday the teacher said, you are somewhere else right now? to be fair. i only ended up making it to little over half the classes. but still.... i wasn't supposed to get worse!

ok. this isn't entirely fair. damn my tongue (actually, please don't. it's useful to me. poor tongue.), but my ear has improved.

the other night at the restaurant a (cute) boy/guy/man came in with his spanish speaking father. the, lets call him a guy, had to translate everything i said for his father and each time he did, i snorted (mentally, otherwise that's weird and rude) and thought, geez, i could have said that.

it was my perfect opportunity to bust out what i've learned. the only spanish i spoke was lo siento (i'm sorry). when he gave me $100 and asked for change on his $75 check, i gave him back $15. (i know it's like 4 quarters in a dollar, still that one always gets me.) the man didn't say de nada. a ten percent tip was his reply.

oh well. onward.

first the ear improves, then the vocabulary, then one day...at some point... i will be fluent. 'cause while maybe some people would improve over three years of trying to speak spanish. or gasp they'd actually be able to speak spanish by now. i've only gotten kind of crappy at it. but whatever. a less quickly melting ice cap is still a slightly improved environment. a lessened number of murders each year is still less people dead. so i'll take my barely improved spanish and run with it.

i've got a lot of life left to live. (you know, hopefully.) and since my ear for french and italian has oddly improved, too, who knows how many languages i'll one day be able to understand and speak crappily.