It’s been such a long time since I’ve written anything here. Since my main audience consists of extended family and some dedicated friends, I guess I don’t feel too guilty. Strangely how that works. For those of you who’ve experienced any sort of following on the internet (or I guess in some other medium), you notice how the countless unknown seem to take more weight than the people you actually know – in terms of getting their attention. They’re strangers, you don’t know what the hell they’re looking for, so you feel obliged to do more and guilty when you don’t do enough. Your friends know you, you know them, and if you don’t post a new podcast episode or some pictures or tweet you’re (mostly) certain they’ll still be your friends.

The unknown completely flips social value upside down. Interesting.

Okay sorry, back to something relevant: what have I been doing all this time?

I’ve been working as much as I can, learning a lot, and thinking and being worried a lot.

Working

• It is tempting to tell everyone “the same ol’ same ol’.”
• It has in fact changed a little bit!
  • In the month of May I worked three solid weeks at the American School (typically it’s once a week).
  • Being there every day made me feel a bit more at home and the kids got to see me a lot more.
  • I substituted a Spanish class, two science classes, two English classes…
  • Fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade…
    • (Fourth grade is secretly the best age level)
• I sometimes substituted at an English academia in Molins de Rei.
  • Recently, one of the teachers left and I was given two of her classes for the remainder of school.
    • (just a month)
  • Now I have a “real” class of my own! Short term, unfortunately.

Although I consistently tell myself that this is not my career path, and I could easily choose this, but I don’t believe I’d be happy in the long term, I do admit I really love teaching. Sure, it’s sometimes frustrating when you have a class of crazy and noisy kids, but when you’re aware of the fact that they’re just kids then it’s not too bad. Explaining something and then watching them apply it is pretty awesome.

• When June ends, so does work. I might have to travel.

Learning

• TED Talks are amazing. I’ve watched hundreds by now. Go learn something random!
• My volunteering at the University of Barcelona VISCA lab has been really good for me.
• I’ve been jumping around a lot of non-fiction books.
• I have a textbook on the visual system in the brain, a book on metaphorical structure in language, an old book that I’m finishing off about the origin of human language, and lots and LOTS of academic research papers.
• It’s starting to wear me down some and I miss a good fiction, but the fascination keeps me going.
• Since I work in research on visual perception at the university I mostly read about vision even though my interest is language.
  • Fortunately I think I’m stumbling across some interesting and new topics I could apply to language!
  • Remember my main curiosity is to discover (in the gritty detail) how people see the world. The avenue (of possible thousands) that I take is to look at the strings connecting the outside world, to thinking and knowing, and where “language” sits on those strings and how it changes them.
  • I might have found something completely new… but I only half understand it at this point and I have to learn so much more to find out if it’s anything special or not.
• I also might look for research opportunities at other universities here if I stick around.

Thinking

• Imagine this. You’re walking along a mysterious dirt path with books thrown about, all over the ground. Apparently you are in pursuit of something. Books contain everything, and you want a certain one. You notice the corner of one sticking out of the ground. A bit of the title is visible, but you don’t know if it’s exactly the one you are looking for. Yet, to dig with your hands, and cast away the grains of dirt is to learn more and more. To uncover more bits of this mystery, you have to learn. So, to ever get a clear look at the book, you have to inform yourself with all the million grains of dirt covering it.
  • Right now I’m doing this. Just kind of poking around. Trying to learn about such and such, unsure where it will lead me.
  • Digging around has always been fun though. I’m exploring.

Worrying

My main worries are:

1. Where do I need to be?
2. How am I going to have any money at all?

1. I keep bouncing back and forth in my mind about staying in Spain, going home to Michigan, going to the USA but somewhere else, going somewhere else in Spain, in Europe, in the world.

• When I lay out some realistic pros and cons it doesn’t make any sense to go to Michigan.
  • It would solve my worrying about money, but I would be socially miserable (and probably not encounter the opportunities for learning like I have here). I’d become stale.
• When I think about the USA I have this dreamy idea about either a long road trip to who-knows-where, or living with my brother in New York.
  • Swiftly return my worries about money. I doubt I could afford a road trip and I certainly wouldn’t be doing much as far as work / getting into school goes.
  • New York, simply put is ridiculously expensive. I’m able to survive here because of the relatively low cost of living. Even with an entry level job (or a teaching job), I don’t imagine being able to pay for NY rent. I just miss seeing my brother. Hopefully he comes here.
• I don’t really know of a place in Spain I’d want to go live in, and it’s too expensive to travel from city to city.
• I could get a job more easily in Germany for example. So I think about going somewhere else in Europe.
  • Despite the fact that I mostly use English in this city, I do enjoy being able to use the language when necessary. Just for asking directions, ordering things, and getting around. Another country means another language and that can be a big barrier.
• For some reason I’d love to go to Australia! That’s just a fancy. I have nothing to do there and it’s far too expensive to get there. I did however find out that flights to India aren’t as expensive as I thought. Since I don’t have summer work, maybe I will go where my money lasts longer: India.

This is just for the short term too. I don’t know where or what I’ll do in September. It’s kind of frustrating and interesting to live in two month spurts.

2. I’m doing pretty well this month and the month previous. I’m making more money than I usually do. I have just been working and living to pay rent, though. Now that summer is here I would like to move around a bit. I’m feeling kind of constrained all this time here abroad and not being able to see a lot. I need to somehow make some EXTRA money so I can see more of the world. Schools close for the summer at the end of June. That’s kind of my deadline of finding something else to do. I think I can either find some private students and keep working here… OR I can take what little money I have and go somewhere else.

So. Anything else to tell the world?

Not really. My social life is still quite small here. Being a relatively shy person, I think most of my friends were accumulated through school, and then when you put me in a new country alone, it’s going to take a while to get that back. I have some good friends here but the dynamics of spending time with them is just different. I also wish I had someone to date, but that’s a step harder than making more friends! That’s kind of frustrating on top of the stuff I already wrote about.

In summary:

I’m pretty happy off and on, but the weight of going to grad school is kind of haunting. I’m trying to do two opposite things here. Enjoy and explore Spain + apply to some good schools. It’s hard to split my interests so far. Once I just take this silly GRE test I think I’ll feel a lot better. Unless, of course, I do horribly.

Maybe the university system is to blame: a professor is someone who has a Ph.D in the subject, nowhere do you hear about people having to pass a training program for teaching well or holding MAs in Applied Linguistics for that matter. Universities do a good job of imparting the culture and some more of the gritty language details (I loved learning about phonetics and linguistics, etc) but I still believe, if you want to learn a language you best place is to start in grade school (you know, the place where the people working there have been trained for such a job) and take private classes while living in a foreign country, if possible.

I’m trying to keep this gripe a short a post. I leave you with the link to this article I quoted. Good stuff:

Linguistic Isolationism

I find it (1) awesome that I still remember logic class, and (2) a little sad that the ability to laugh at this joke cost several hundred dollars – higher education.

I don’t give myself much credit, so you won’t catch me claiming to be good at Spanish, but yes I think I had an affinity for it. My parents would rarely use it around me as a child in the same way that a monolingual household might encounter two adults s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g things out so the kids won’t comprehend it. I don’t have specific memories of this, but I recall a general urge or desire to speak whatever the heck it was they were using when I was little.

This was all reinforced with cultural items around the house and stories and slideshows from my Dad about living in Paraguay and elsewhere. When you get to the point in school where you can pick a second language if you want to learn one (it’s quite too late to begin, honestly, at thirteen) I obviously picked Spanish just as someone might pick their science fair topic to be on something their engineer parent knows about.

Like piano lessons and reading Steven Hawking to Steinbeck, it was the sort of scholastic thing that I enjoyed more than I thought someone my age really should, but didn’t think of actually devoting myself to it. Never paying much attention to Spanish, I was fascinated by science throughout the majority of my school life. Then came college, and I had to pick something I was good at to actually pay attention to. I suddenly shifted to Spanish.

The more I learned the more I loved.

It was a good choice, and in retrospect, maybe the worst way to go about learning it. At least at Grand Valley State University it was near pointless. The Spanish program seemed to follow a logical skeleton (reading, writing, culture courses, etc) but lacking in coordination and a real focus on fluency of the language. If you want to learn one, don’t waste your time in academics. Yes, it has the value of learning about culture, which I loved, and the grammar is useful if you want to teach it perhaps, but… just immerse yourself, take private (or small) courses with a heavy emphasis on conversation if you want to learn a foreign language.

Oh, here’s a thought:

Learning a language :: heating some food

University :: using a microwave (focused, the design is well engineered, yet in the end, soggy food)

Living off L2 movies, music, podcasts etc. :: boiling (useful to the point that it gets hot in the end, but really wet – or: can’t use it much)

Moving to a country that uses the L2 :: oven (perfect, a little slower, might require preheating, but it’s the best overall)

Apologies if you didn’t get any of that. Sometimes I think an analogy is just great, but poorly executed.

——————————————- ::

That’s why I STUDIED Spanish, but why do I like it, and why stick with it?

I like how it sounds.

I like how it looks.

It’s simple (yet complex); almost elegant.

I think the same can almost be said for me and piano. That’s a kind of interesting self-observation. You might be able to identify if you play an instrument. It’s something that does require practice, but is enjoyable when you reach a good level. I am very critical of learning a foreign language in a university setting, but I must say that the literature of any language you want to learn is a beautiful medium to immerse yourself in. The downside might be when it is used as a principle method for teaching you.

I love Spanish. The end.