Well, it happened….

I cried.

I know, I know, it was bound to happen and quite honestly, I’m impressed I made it three weeks before I did.

I love it here and I love the new/interesting/exciting things happening every day.  But it’s also challenging. Namely because I am not a fluent Spanish speaker.

Don’t get me wrong, I get by, but there is a certain level of understanding that takes you from merely accomplishing things to actually interacting with people. And, well, I’m still at level 1.

Three times a week, I meet with Jorge, my amazing Spanish tutor. We sit down for an hour and a half and he helps me stumble through grammar, pronunciation, understanding. The basics.

Before our last meeting, I ordered a fancy coffee. Well, I thought I did. The cashier was confused, and she started asking me questions trying to understand what I wanted. But I couldn’t understand her questions. After some back and forth, and me just confusing her more, I gave up. I didn’t know what she’s asking, and I didn’t know how to explain what I wanted. I’ll just have a plain coffee please.

Feeling a little defeated, I went to pay and gave the cashier the wrong change.  Two pesos still looks just like five pesos to me and then we started the whole process over. The cashier was telling me my change was wrong and what change I needed. Which should have been easy, but I was feeling frustrated and flustered. Suddenly numbers, which I know, were sounding very foreign and confusing.

It was something like this:
Me diste cuatro en lugar de quince, necesito once, está bien, son cinco, aún necesito seis más, cinco otra vez, aquí dame los diez, no, no te arrepientas de los dos, solo …

All the while, I am shuffling through my coin purse trying to find the right amount and just feeling overall incompetent. I am ready for people to understand me and for me to understand them!

I grabbed my plain coffee and the second I sat down to talk to Jorge, I started crying. The poor guy! Nothing like having a blubbering adult woman cry over god knows what.

Es el café no es bueno? Haha, no the coffee is fine, my sanity on the other hand. No es bueno.