learning another language is hard

No getting around it. One week ago, exactly, I was sitting in my room thinking maybe I had it wrong all these years. Other languages are easy to pick up. Maybe I should start learning another one while I am still learning Spanish. Cocky thoughts. Fairly insane thoughts....because week 2 of Spanish brought with it something I was not expecting.

Other verb tenses.

I no longer am supposed to talk in the here and now. And it has thrown me for quite a loop. But the more I get into it, the more I think that it is doable, just with time and a lot of work. Right now it is kind of tough. My two favorite Spanish talking related stories to date are (in chronological order):

1. Someone was trying to help me with my Spanish by asking me easy questions, "How are you?" "What are you wearing today?" etc. So they came to the question of "Do you like the outdoors? and why?" What I meant to say was "Yes I do like the outdoors because of the pretty trees" but what came out was "Mountains are well because of tall grandmothers"

I thought this was right, kept saying it, sometimes louder, sometimes enunciated better, but I kept saying it. It was not right. Or really very close.

2. I found myself in a situation where I asked the following question in Spanish to an 88 year old Chilean woman, "Do you enjoy knitting wool hats for 200 yellow canaries?" I thought this was a hilarious turn of events, and she just calmly answered "No." Spanish is hard.

Other than butchering foreign languages, I have spent time getting ready for a conference I am going to in Germany in a month and getting around the city a bit more.

The downtown area of Santiago is very vibrant with a lot of shops, street performers, restaurants and local artisans selling their goods.

More pictures, less words.

Until next time.