One Year On

First things first, hello dear reader! I’m sorry I’ve been somewhat on the quiet side lately, life has been crazy busy recently and I’ve had absolutely no free time, but I haven’t forgotten about updating you on my Arg shenanigans and will still be writing posts when I can.

So anyways, on with the show!

The observant among you may have noticed from the title that it seems like I have recently reached the one year mark of being abroad! This is not without some comings and goings, the largest of which being when I returned home for a month and a bit in January just gone, but I first arrived just over a year ago. I can’t believe it’s been a whole year! It seems like a lifetime ago now that I first arrived.

It’s also the most bizarre but satisfying thing looking back on where I was a year ago and where I am now. A year ago I could understand a fair amount of Spanish but by no means everything and I would be really stuck when there was group conversation, I couldn’t follow it and I would feel completely tired out by the effort of trying to understand. I wouldn’t go out of my way to talk to people because I was embarrassed and lacking confidence with Spanish. I would try and take up as little space as possible so that attention wouldn’t turn to me so I wouldn’t have to try and cobble together a coupla words in Spanish. Now, I can follow group conversations, I have way more confidence to try and speak to people, even if my grammar is horrendous and I don’t mind being called upon with no prior warning. In fact, recently I was suddenly called upon to pray at the end of the youth group to close the meeting. As it was sudden I didn’t have a chance to think through my Spanish in my head beforehand. Afterwards I asked nolz if it had been okay and he said I said it with abso no errors at all, hurrah!! Praying in another language is very difficult 😂 and a lot of the times when I do I make a lot of mistakes but this time I didn’t haha.

I think for me, being able to communicate has helped me enormously to feel part of life here. I remember talking to my brother about it and he was asking me, so how do you actually learn? Does it work, just being there and picking it up? And then proceeded to test me on a few bits from a book he had and I could immediately translate them (much to his surprise!). It’s funny thinking about this way of learning. I am acquiring language in the same way that a baby learns to talk and to speak- it’s so funny thinking of it like that! I’m quite focused on trying to use certain slang phrases and informal things at the moment because that’s fun hehe.

But yeah, isn’t that completely nuts that I’ve been here for such a long time! Currently I’m not sure when I’ll be able to come home because of the whole covid sitch. I literally can’t leave the country as the borders are closed still. I have a feeling they’re not at home but it’s hard to keep up with what’s going on everywhere. Anyways, I shan’t go into covid in detail now as I’m probably gonna write a post on it one of these days when I get the chance. I hope all you lovely people are doing well. Much love as always xxxxx

p.s. I mentioned in my last blog post about my book that’s recently been published. It’s a series called “Greater than a tourist”. If you fancy having a little look or buying a copy, click here.