workhorses

Before, I understood the meanings of the words, but it wasn't until I arrived in Ecuador that the words started to have meaning. Perhaps one of the key motivators to learn another language when immersed in it is to free yourself of the prison of your limited vocabulary. But it's also a matter of being comfortable in my surroundings, feeling confident that I will be able to handle any curve ball my host country throws at me. I may have memorized the script for ordering food at a cafe, but unfortunately life is ad lib, and asking "¿Como?" only gets me so far. Initiating a conversation with a person here is like trotting through a minefield... you may be able to make it to the other side ok, but you never know when they're going to stop speaking understandable Spanish and start speaking jibberish.

I have never so much thought of words as tools that one can employ at will for personal gain. Words, so far speaking in English, have been more playthings for me, ways to spruce up my writing or make myself sound sophisticated (or crude, as the case may be). I'm sure when I was a child first learning to speak new words functioned as tools, but, obviously, I hardly remember that. But here, each new word, each new grammatical structure opens new possibilities, like new levels on a video game. You just achieve level-8 subjunctive conjugation power.

All Spanish objects in my mind are hermaphroditic. The genders just don't behave in their proscribed two categories... it's a regular orgy in my brain, the females masquerading as males and the males all dolled up in drag.