I am finally there :)

     After living in NPH-DR for 3 months and 2 weeks to date I have finally gotten to the point where I can say anything at any time in any place.  When I first arrived I was very nervous to speak Spanish to people that I had never met before especially because they had had a life of practice with the language and I only a few years.  Therefore, I did not speak much in the beginning, I spoke really low or fast because I had not built the confidence I needed to speak the language.  However, now I have seen tremendous growth in my language speaking ability and my nervousness when speaking has vanished.  I feel that I can finally be myself in Spanish!  My personality has always included me telling a lot of jokes and enjoying making people laugh.  During my arrival here I felt that that part was stripped away from me and I could not express the real Maya because I was unsure of myself.  Now, I definitely feel confident and I can be who I am and express all the things that I want in Spanish.  I feel that I am 90% there because I can also understand mostly anything that the natives say to me as well.  This is really great because language is such a powerful tool in communicating and expressing one’s self and when I felt that I did not have that tool it was very challenging to navigate in the Dominican Republic.  Now I feel overjoyed with my progress and am excited for each day as I grow, learn more and as my Spanish improves little by little.

     Continuing off of the fact that I feel a lot more comfortable expressing myself in Spanish, it is also great that I have become integrated in the community because now many Dominicans recognize me.  I have a favorite pizza place, traditional Dominican food store, hamburger place and post office, which I am a frequent visitor.  The workers at these places have started to recognize me and most know me by face and others by name as well.  They have become “amigos míos” (my friends) and I am always excited to greet them, as they are to greet me and me and to receive more of my business.  It is also great because they have been really helpful whenever I have needed help or was unsure about things in the city.  They are always more than willing to help me and it feels great to have older Dominican friends looking out for me.

     Finally, another lesson that I have learned from being here is not being afraid to make mistakes.  I know that this is probably a lesson that we all have learned from our parents by the age of eight but this lesson can really go along way.  I feel that it can be really hard to be bold enough to step out of your comfort zone and make mistakes.  For me, always speaking a language that is not my native tongue in a foreign country has been a challenge.  One mistake that I have made, for example, is asking someone if they were pregnant when I intended to ask them if they were embarrassed.  I used a false cognate because the words for “embarrassed” in English sounds similar to the word for “pregnant” in Spanish thus it is easy to get them confused and mixed up.  However, I love that we can all laugh about these moments and move on.  Also, these moments are what actually make me learn Spanish a lot better and a lot quicker.  I know that I don’t want to make these same mistakes over again so I am extra careful and cautious that I use the right verbs with the right conjugation so that these slip-ups don’t happen again.  I feel that when we don’t take these steps and make these mistakes we stunt our on growth.  We do not enable ourselves to learn more and to feel okay with being uncomfortable.  I feel that this lesson also parallels with my experience in the classroom when I attended the University of Michigan.  A lot of times I would raise my hand hoping that what I was saying was the right answer or that I wouldn’t ask a question that I should have already know the answer to.  I quickly learned that the moments where I made mistakes where when I learned the most in the class.  The mistakes I make in the Spanish language and in my classes at the university are the things that stick with me the most and what I have ultimately learned the most from.