The girl in the bubble

Frustration with the language situation is mounting.

It is an incredibly strange experience to be completely incapable of interacting with the outside world, other than in a strictly utilitarian sense. At first, of course, I was pretty thrilled to find myself asking for keys to my classroom and actually receiving them....triumph! Asking for a coffee....getting a coffee! Going to the supermarket....leaving with groceries! Call me Napoleon. Battles being won left and right.

Now that I'm a bit settled, though, I am feeling the effects of not being able to have even the most basic of pleasant conversations. In the past, I have lived and worked with intermediate language abilities. That was frusturating at times. But imagine this scenario:

You are at a bar with friends. With their superior Spanish skills, they strike up a conversation with some other people, and from what you understand of the exchange everyone seems likable and interesting. So you turn to the person next to you, open your mouth and.....stand there absolutely silent with the shocking realization that you can't say anything at all. Unless of course this other person would care to have a nice chat about what time it is, your respective ages and countries of origin, and perhaps food preferences.

This happens to me a lot. For some reason I seem to forget that I am not functional in this language, so I frequently find myself in the above situation. Open mouth, close mouth....fish out of water syndrome.