Madrugar

I’m writing these words on the floor, sitting in front of the fan that sits upon a chair in my room. My room is in building C, in an apartment complex in Los Patios, Cúcuta, Colombia, where I’ve been living for the past three weeks. For three weeks, I’ve been living with my host mother, and her mother. My host sister was here for my first week, but she, same as me, is a Rotary Youth Exchange student and departed for Germany ten days ago.

I had a lot of trouble deciding what the name of this post should be. My plan is to choose a word for every post, a word in Spanish, that relates to my experience and make it the title for each post. At first, I thought that this would be simple: I would just pick something that happened to me this week and center my post about it. Yet, in three weeks, I’ve encountered countless stories, experiences, and endless conversations about language. I’ve gone bike riding around Los Patios, flown kites in a nearby town in the mountains called Bochalema, gone on an overnight retreat with my school to another town called Chinacota, gone to church, the mall, eaten so many Colombian (and Venezuelan) meals, and drank about twenty mugs of coffee.

And still, I had no idea what story to tell for my first post. It wasn’t until yesterday, when I was walking our two dogs with my host mother and abuela around our apartment complex, that I knew I had to start speaking about my experiences. We were having a conversation about my homework for school (I started school about a week and a half ago) which is to read a book. The book, like everything in my school, is completely in Spanish, and so my host mother asked me what I do when I’m reading and I don’t understand what the words say. I told her that while it I hate to do it, I sometimes use a translator, and so we started speaking about translations and the faults of Google Translate. I brought up how there are synonyms that exist in Spanish and not English, and vice versa. We spoke about how some Spanish words are the same, but have different meanings. “Like mañana,” my host grandmother says. “‘Mañana mañana‘ doesn’t exist, you say ‘mañana pasada’”. This conversation was completely in Spanish, since the two women don’t know any English. When my host grandmother said this, I thought about it for a while. I knew that mañana can mean tomorrow and morning, but I had never thought to not say “Mañana mañana” to mean “tomorrow morning”.

This conversation was such a typical one, and to some it might not seem very special. Yet for me, talking about language, in another language, is an incredible thing. It’s happened quite a few times over these three weeks. My first week, when my host sister was still here, we went out for sushi with one of her friends. At this point, I was still feeling overwhelmed and overstimulated from everything, as every day was a new introduction and new thing to get accustomed to. I was expecting this dinner to be the same as other dinners, where I sat there not understanding much and disassociating. Yet all we did was speak about language. We chatted on and on about Colombian slang, English and Spanish tongue twisters, phrases that only exist in Latin America, and more. Then, we talked about accents: how many different Colombian accents there are, what the differences between them are, and how there are some Hispanic accents that the two girls can’t understand. This night really changed my vision about my exchange. It made me feel a lot more comfortable to simply talk about language. Before, the language barrier had really isolated me. I hadn’t prepared for the Colombian Spanish to be so fast, and my thoughts 24/7 were about how difficult the language barrier really was when you came up to it.

At one moment in the night, one of the girls asked me what my favorite word in Spanish was. I thought about it for a while, and I really couldn’t come up with an answer. I love “chévere” (cool), “chistoso” (funny) “bacano” (another word for cool) among many many other words. Yet yesterday, after our walk around the complex, I think I’ve picked my favorite. Madrugar is a verb, which you can tell by the -ar ending. What I love about this word is not the meaning, but that it squeezes four words into one. Madrugar = to wake up early. That’s what I love about translating between Spanish and English: there are so many times when a sentence can be much shorter, but have the same meaning.

My school, Comfaroriente, starts at 7 and my transportation comes at 6:20. So, during the week I’m forced madrugar. In Colombia, you stay in the same classroom the whole day, with the same kids, and the teachers switch around. I have so many more classes than I did in the United States, and there’s about 40 students in my salon (classroom), which is much more than I had in my high school in Maine. I don’t have to worry about grades or passing tests, only about getting used to the Spanish and at least trying my best. The students are so, so kind, although it does sometimes get very overwhelming when twenty kids are asking you question after question, and you can’t understand everything they’re saying.

After school, I can usually relax for a good while, then go to the pool in my apartment complex. It is a really good way to end the day, especially because every day wears me out a lot. But that’s to be expected, when you’re completely immersed in a new language and a new culture, and everyone around you is a person you hadn’t known three weeks ago. Today is Sunday, so of course, tomorrow voy a madrugar. I’m excited, because most every day we have English class where I not only can help teach the other students English, but I learn a little more Spanish from them. I’ll be on the lookout for another word to exchange!

Sabine