26 september 2006

9:17 PM
In about 40 minutes, I need to have completed something that can pass for an essay. Something I'm going to do now to get into the spirit, this one will be called Rambling on Las Ramblas.
No use premeditating, or anything. I've just got to get this out. It's been long enough. I need to set out to do this. Life has brought me this far, with all the pitfalls and achievements.
To be honest I would never have seen myself here, living like this. Life has prepared me for this even though it never told me straightforward that I would be here, in this place. Somehow it all makes sense that I'm here.
It's all about learning. Not anything I could have been taught in schoo, no this is something that many can't cope with. This change has been tearing at me but it really can't be any other way, can it? I mean, I had to get out of this rut where I was attached to a place. The more time passed, the more the thing that had kept me there seemed so futile. Last time, my life was so miserable because I couldn't let go. Through much disappointment, I eventually had to learn that no matter what feelings I had for someone, they might not be reciprocated. Meaning I had to be scared into this situation where I eventually overcame that same fear, that I could leave everything I was used to and make something of myself where there had been nothing of me.
Fear can trap us, but we have it in us to learn and conquer that fear. There are few things as scary as having to survive in a place where you don't speak the language. But if we open up to the world, we can see the light, we can see that like everything else, we can learn what we need to to survive. We need that fear that we could just fall over without learning, but we also need the courage to step up and take the challenge.
Fear brings us to the steps of the place where we will find the tools to brandish so we can survive. But learning to hold them is another thing. Everyone learns in a different way, from memory of how our word for apple becomes the very English apple, and associating it with the image. It's one very different thing to have to acknowledge your view of the world is very similar and at the same time very different when you have to immerse yourself into the world view while abandoning everything you once knew, at least in an extremely verbal attack on your only method of communicating. It's a lot harder to sift through the language in an everyday manner. You might get by after a week just counting up and remembering fruits of watever, but still, we can't connect words that aren't things as easily. We see signs everywhere, and we get used to them, and in this way, reading, we can connect.
Humans understand images. We see the same things wherever we are, unless we're blind, in which case we have to approach things very differently. If we can learn to relate the image to the word and further rendering of of this image brings to mind both words of two different yet similar words, we've begun learning. And hopefully it will bring us to the point that we can bring up the word as if we had known the word since we were young. We are stepping into a new world, as infants, because now, more than ever, we must again learn how to relate in a quite different world.
Picture us entering the world again, embracing the colors of the world, but this time we are opening up to life in Spain. Indeed coming to Spain and being in Barcelona has been an eye-opening experience for me. When we immerse ourselves in another language, we aren't expected to know more than the concepts of the images and then we must relate them to the worlds in the same way as we did when we were learning our first language and we had a very vague dictionary to draw on when we had to assimilate into this world. In many ways this is a rebirth and for the rest of our lives we'll have two minds, two languages. We can draw on this language for the duration of our lives to associate with more people than we could've imagined, because we grew up in two different worlds.

10:00 PM

Rambling on Las Ramblas
When we were very young, we came into this world having to grasp images and then put names to them, so we could tell our parents exactly what we wanted once crying began to fail us. In very much the same way, learning another language can be just as fruitful when we find ourselves in the position where we need to know how to say the things so we can survive in a different country. This is essentially the scenario where we want to learn, know how to learn and be in the right place for learning.
Much like when we were babies, it becomes tiring when we have to resort to something other than spoken language to get what we want, so we decide we need to learn the language so we can get around easier. Even more, we are virtually in a situation where we cannot communicate with peers, and need to be able to say more than what is necessary to buy a pa con chocolat at the local bakery. Essentially this is the situation where we find ourselves wanting to learn.
Next we have to begin to associate the things, the concrete things, the ones that denote an image and in the same way we did as babies associate an image with that. We need to open ourselves to this world, as we did as youngsters, and the concepts will again come to us as they did before. When I arrived in Barcelona, I came wide-eyed, taking everything in, associating the stores with what they sold, and having to understand that there were even stores that specialized in things rather than in the suburbs where everyone could get everything from one giant superstore. I had to associate names with these concepts as well.
Nevertheless, we can't possibly learn everything we can about a language, not ever as adults, without assistance. There are more concepts to be weary of than we can possibly learn throughout a few months. Thus we need to be in the situation where we're forcefed the ideas and words in rations instead of forced to comprehend an entire world that is entirely alien to us. In much the same way as kids, we're taught that abstract concepts have words for them and only then can we begin to understand how the two words are linked and such.
In conclusion, we find ourselves grown up again once we master the language and begin to understand a different place where our old ideas don't entirely fit in. We, instead of translating, associate the words in a new language as we do with our first languageand the images that they represent. We've grown up twice, thrice, depending on the number of languages, and we can now exist knowingly in two worlds, such as for me an English-speaking world and a Spanish-speaking world, and for the duration of our lives, we can take these and use them where knowing only one language would fail us. 10:40 PM