El español y yo

I first started learning Spanish in kindergarten, and although most of what we learned consisted of colors and classroom objects, my five-year-old self loved it. Throughout elementary and middle school, my mind became a deposit box for all kinds of sweet-sounding words: las zanahorias, el paraguas, la alegría.  Granted, some of them were trivial things (carrots, umbrella), but I treasured them nonetheless.

After taking four years of Spanish at Uni, I still can't get over the fact that I can listen to music and understand almost all the lyrics, or read poems and watch television. I can read the work of authors like Gabriela Mistral and Gabriel García Marquez in their original language, and see the words they wrote, unfiltered by translation.

Keeping up my Spanish is difficult, especially since my 45 minutes of Spanish class have been exchanged for French class (j'aime le français aussi).  I've held Cien años de soledad by Gabriel García Marquez at the library, and can't wait to start reading it. I've also taken up watching a Colombian telenovela (television show/drama-like thing) called Betty la fea (Betty the Ugly One) once in a while. The American television show Ugly Betty was adapted from this version, and it's interesting to see how the two shows treat situations and characters differently. Plus, each episode is around 45 minutes!

I would love to visit a Spanish-speaking country one day, and want to study abroad in college. I haven't really had the chance to practice my speaking abilities lately, but hopefully listening to other people speak at rapid-fire speed (you would not believe how fast people in telenovelas speak when they are angry) has been maintaining my accent a little.