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 Vallarta Living | December 2005 
Vivendo en Mexico (Living in Mexico) 6
 Korah Winn - PVNN
I struggled a little bit this semana (week) when I started to write this column. The reason why is because it is not going to be all about sunshine, lemon drops and arco iris (rainbows). What I mean is that when I write, I try to be incredibly positive because life is very good and exciting. I want to share the best parts of it with all the people I come in contact with. I have to admit though, that along with good comes bad.
I had difficulty because I do not want to present a negative portrayal of living in a different country but I would feel I am being remiss in my writing if I did not give a full picture of what my time here is truly like. With all that said, I am going to make more of an effort to share the full breadth of my experiences in México.
I have got to admit, it has been hard, much more than I thought it would be. When I came, I was naive because I had the assumption that if I moved to a foreign pais (country) I would very easily begin speaking the language because I would hear people talking in the calles (streets) and be reading signs everywhere.
How could I not help but become fluent in that environment? First of all, I had to realize that I am not a child and I cannot soak up the language like a child is able to do. Secondly, you can hear a language being spoken for hours but if no meaning is attached to the palabras (words) you are listening to, you really have not gleaned much from the experience.
In the past, whenever I ran into a problem I could usually always rely on communication to get me out of it. It is hard to switch to a different way. Imagine you are on a bus in a foreign city. You are not at your destination yet but you know you cannot stay on the bus because it is now going a different direction than what you need. Where you are at has no bus stop signs anywhere and it has become dark outside while you rode the bus. You cannot ask anyone for directions because you do not speak their idioma (language). What do you do at that point?
The reason I asked that question is because I want you to empathize with extranjeros (foreigners) and get a feeling for what it is like to not be able to operate like you normally would. Please be kind to people when you see that they are struggling with a different language. Try to understand that the words not come automatically. I am here solely for the purpose of studying Spanish.
I put in upwards of seis (six) hours a day just studying the language and I am still at a loss. Whenever I encounter frustrations, I just have to take them with the good and keep going. When I was a child my dad was fond of saying, "You can't eat an elephant in one bite." A language is the same. You have to take bites out of it because you cannot digest it in one gulp no matter how much you wish you could.
Moral of the story, be kind to foreigners because the last thing they need is someone thinking, "If they live in my country they should speak my language." Most people do not realize how hard they are trying to do just that. ¡Salud!
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