The Magical Six Month Mark

People have told me for years that after you live for six months in a foreign country where you are not a native speaker that your language skills in the particular language you are learning in the particular country you are living in start to kick in and you notice an improvement.  I am happy to report that this is happening to me as well.  It is not like now I am a native speaker, that will take me several more years at least to get to a point where I feel really comfortable, but in the past couple of weeks I have noticed a marked change in my ability to understand people better, and also have more of a cadence once I start talking a bit.  It is still pretty basic Spanish, and I am not able to carry on a really deep conversation and express myself the way I would like to, but it is basic enough to get to know some one who you have never met before and have a nice talk.



There is one important ingredient though that has to be there, and this is something that is not obvious to a lot of people. The person you are speaking with must understand where you are coming from and understand what it takes for you to understand them.  If they do not get that point then I still am not able to be successful in conversation.  The person has to really understand to slow down their speech dramatically in order for you to understand.  When that happens, then the conversation is able to blossom into a nice flower.

As the time goes on here, I am liking living here more and more.  It is a beautiful country with beautiful people.  I can pretty much say that of all the places I have visited in Latin America and all of the people I meet here.  I am starting to get to know people from all over South America.  

I am starting to understand better the different peoples from different lands and know their idiosyncracies of their culture and who they are.  This is why I came down here, to get to know better, what this place is all about.  With that said, as we all know in life, the more we get to learn and understand something, the more we get to know how much we do not know.

That is truly the case in understanding the country of Argentina.  As I spend more time here, I am starting to learn more about what it is like to live here, and what the problemas are as well.  And there are many problems both in Argentina, and Latin America as a whole.  BUT this piece is not about that, it is just worth noting that this information is out there for my consumption and processing.

Yesterday, I got to go to a families home once again who lives here in Argentina and witness first hand what it is like to be with a family down here.  This is my second chance at doing this, and what I get to see is truly fascinating.  The thing I continue to witness down here in Latin America is the close knitness of the family.  The family UNIT is very important, it is essential to life in Latin America and probably in most parts of the world.  Clearly this is both good and bad, and the ramifications of this cultural effect has many social and political dissertations at its feet, but suffice it to say that this component of a society is very interesting in how it ties the social fabric of a nation together and what it means to be part of a bigger picture.

Clearly, in Estados Unidos, this is not the case.  There are pockets where this is true, and many families in the United States maintain this bond that I witness down here, but clearly it is not as normal as it is down here.  For me personally, I am lucky to still be relatively close with my parents and immediate siblings, but the distance I have traveled in my life, and not living close to home my whole entire life, I have not experienced the close knittedness overall that you see not only with your immediate family members but also the extended family members as well.  Yet, another component of life in Latin America.

I will close for now on this topic and this post, but I look forward to exploring other areas of life in Latin America and what it means for a country and a society as a whole as the experience expands even further and wider and deeper.