Here’s What I Think…

I just spent three days in the Zona Rosa district of Mexico City, one of my favorite places in the world.  Traveling is my passion in life, and though I love my home in Los Angeles, I always get antsy if I don’t have a trip in the books.  But what made this long weekend so special was a seminal moment I had on Saturday night, in a lively bar full of fun and friendly patrons, where a Mexican man who only spoke Spanish was trying to have a conversation with me.  I never was the best student.  So much television in my childhood did a real number on my attention span.  I studied German in high school and can only remember how to say, “Where is the bathroom?”  But with great fanfare after a trip to Spain two years ago, I studied Spanish at the Beverly Hills Lingual Institute .  I got the basics, but never retained much.  Recently I began to watch movies on DVD with the Spanish subtitles zipping past on the bottom of the screen so I could associate words with their English equivalent.  I didn’t think it was working because I still freeze up when someone speaks to me in rapid fire Spanish.  But while I tried to speak to this man in the bar, words were more recognizable than ever before.  I actually understood what he was saying to me.  I could even respond and not have him give me a dumbfounded look.  I was, in a small way, speaking another language.  Next month I go to Spain and in addition to stopping in my beloved favorite European city Madrid as well as Barcelona where almost everyone speaks English, I’m hitting some smaller cities and towns where most people don’t.  This could be a real test for me in my quest to speak Spanish.  I’m well into my forties now, and regret not learning when I was younger, but hell, it’s never too late.