Monday, June 22, 2009

Dia Treinta y Cinco - Past the Point of No Return

20 de Junio del 2009 – Dia Treinta y Cinco

This is it. The peak of the mountain. The point of no return. I am at halfway point of my trip.


Today is the thirty-fifth day that I have been in Costa Rica. I have exactly thirty-five days remaining. Tomorrow morning I will wake with the majority of my time in Costa Rica behind me, the road ahead growing ever more narrow.


Time seems to have flown by so fast. It seems as only a few days ago that I got off the plane and spoke practically no Spanish at all. I can see how much I have learned, but I still feel so far from the goal of basic comprehension of “street Spanish” (as opposed to “classroom Spanish”). I can only hope that learning Spanish is more exponential than linear. I feel like I could pass a test in five weeks, but I still can’t imagine myself without a Spanish-Ingles dictionary while conversing with real people.


With Noah and Benjamin gone, though, I will have less opportunity to speak English, which I hope will help me a lot. I am going to try an experiment this next week. I am taking a short break from writing the blog to both recharge my batteries for blog post ideas and as part of a larger “English fast.” I have decided to take this opportunity while Benjamin is gone to do my best not to speak or listen to English at all this week (or at least, as minimal as possible). This means I will take my mid-morning breaks and avoid the English speakers as much as politely possible, I will not read the news on the English websites for a week, I won’t read non-essential mail, I won’t check facebook status, and I won’t write my blog. (Even when I write in Spanish, I really write in English first and just translate it.) Instead, I will try to take pictures during the week and post them instead. But for this week of English fasting, I won’t be writing any. Which means this is my last written post for one week. We’ll see how it goes.


I am excited about the new few weeks. I am so glad that God worked it out so that I would be in San Joaquin for the whole ten weeks. I love the town, I think I am learning more here than I could elsewhere, and my tico family is perfect, I cannot imagine going somewhere else and having an improved experience. I have known them only five weeks but I look forward to staying with them another five (if they can put up with me for that long, at least ;-) :-P).


Tomorrow is the big day. It will be the first day that a PHCer will not be living within walking distance. In one sense it is the peak of the mountain for the time I am here. But in another, more important sense, this is only the beginning of the foothills - still the first steps of a continuing endeavor to learn and speak the Spanish language. I’ve invested the last five weeks in learning Spanish and I have begun this journey. It is a journey that will last a lifetime and it is a journey that recognizes only those who reach the goal and those that fall short. Now that I have started, there is no withdrawing. I either learn Spanish or I fail to accomplish the enterprise I started five weeks ago. The die is cast, the journey begun, and I have past the point of no return.

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