So if you follow me on instagram or facebook, you may have picked up on the fact that something cool happened in the life of me yesterday! Before I get into it I would just like to clarify to all of you, and any new readers that are now reading my humble blog offerings, that the title I have written is very much tongue in cheek and I’d like to think that I’m not super big headed. Although I admit that I am feeling just a little bit famous right now.
To give you some back story, I recently wrote a travel guide in a series called Greater than a tourist on Salta. The idea of this series is that you have to have lived in the place you’re going to write about for more than 4 months and you have to give 50+ tips on how to have a holiday there where people will see the real place, not just that which is shown to the tourists. This was published on amazon in May and is available on digital devices and paperback (still gives me a thrill to say that!). Unfortunately I don’t get any royalties although if you buy through the links attached here then I should get a small percentage.
Anyways, word of my book got through to the minister of tourism for Salta and before I knew it there was an interview set up with him! When I admitted to Javier (my boyfriends dad) that I was a little nervous at having to speak in Spanish in an interview that was going to be on TV he assured me it wasn’t going to be filmed which I’m ever so glad he did or else I’m sure I probably would have had no sleep and heart palpitations haha.
After getting suited and booted, me and Nolz (acting in official translator capacity if needed) were ushered into Mario Peña(the minister of tourism in Salta)’s office to have an interview prior to the TV interview, where I explained the book series and the areas that I’ve written about in my book (cultural things to be aware of, food and drink that people have to try, places to visit etc) as well as the minister himself telling me about some projects they’re working on currently (apparently Argentina has about 700 different species of birds! Who knew?) and aspects of tourism that perhaps they’d like to improve on. I actually managed quite well with the Spanish and understood the majority of what was said. It passed me by slightly at the time because I was concentrating so much on everything that was going on but it was even suggested that perhaps, if I wanted to do a second book (!!!) they could take me to some places in Salta and help me with some further writing. I’m really excited about potentially doing this!! I absolutely love writing and I’ve been thinking recently, even before the interview, that perhaps I could try and do some bits in tourism since I would be able to visit some cool places as well as having something to offer in terms of being a native speaker who’s slowly getting more of a grasp with Spanish too. Or whether perhaps I could get involved in some more writing in my spare time.
Then without further ado in came the TV crew! I had a few minutes before we went live (lol what is my life that I’ve just written this sentence!) so had a lil chat with the interviewer which I was immeasurably grateful for since I knew the vague direction of where the interview would be going and thus thought I’d be okay to answer okay! Which I did more or less! I did make some mistakes but nothing (I don’t think and people have assured me) that would hinder people understanding what I was saying. In fact everyone who I’ve spoken to said I spoke well and they were proud of me! And to be honest, I’m quite proud of myself too, haha. I’ve watched it back and whilst it’s weird seeing myself speaking on TV in a different language, I didn’t really make any howlers mistakes wise, though looking back there are some bits I could have added to my answers. The funniest thing was, that as I was sitting there my phone kept buzzing away in my pocket. Afterwards I came out and looked at my phone and I had a whole load of messages from people who had seen me on the TV and were congratulating me haha.
Since then, I’ve been riding a wave of hilarity and bewilderment over the events of yesterday. I’ve had over 30 adds on social media, various private messages pinged over to me and a hearty number of people reading this blog, who have been directed to it through the governments news page who uploaded a post about my book and el tribuno which is a newspaper here, who also uploaded an online article. So I wanted to say, if you’re new to reading my blog posts, welcome and it’s great to have you!!
Well anyways, since the excitement of yesterday I’m feeling somewhat worn out. I think it’s time for me to settle down with some chocolate or perhaps a hot chocolate (I’ve finally worked out how to make an approximate equivalent to hot chocolate here!! That’s almost equally exciting as this whole TV schebazzle. Well, perhaps not quite, but it’s definitely up there), a film and a little nap. I shall leave you with a photo from yesterday and the link to the video incase you want to see me with my Spanish in action!
Video: https://youtu.be/hU1xuq0G1iI
Nadia's Adventures 