Clase de Espanol

You know how everyone always says to hold your tongue.  As if that's going to rid the world of all its problems?  Well, I'm pretty convinced that's just a big lie.

The past couple months Doug and I have been taking a Community Ed Spanish class.  It was a good class, our teacher was a native Spanish speaker so we got to learn great pronunciation and had a good review of some basic Spanish rules.  However this week was our last class and I have to admit, I am SO relieved.

I'm a bit past the beginners Spanish stage seeing as how I've lived in South America and all.  Not too big of a deal, it was going to be fun to take a class with Doug and I figured the class would be a good grammar review.  The first couple classes I kept pretty quiet, I had no intention of keeping my Spanish skills secret or anything, but my fellow classmates were working hard to learn basic things and I didn't want to sound like some know it all.

So by about the third class our classmates were getting a little discouraged (as all language students do) and our teacher decided to do a little exercise to lift our spirits.  She told us how, while it seemed we weren't learning anything we had all picked up a lot already.  She explained that little kids who are learning to talk can understand words before they can say them.  She said we were the same way and that, while we were having a hard time expressing ourselves in Spanish, we'd picked up a lot that we could listen to and comprehend.  So, to prove this point she'd randomly pick one of us out of the class (there were about 30 of us) to go in front of the class and listen to directions given in Spanish.  It would amaze us how much was understood.

She looks into the class to pick her example of what 3 days of Spanish class can do.  She, of course, randomly points to me, the fluent Spanish speaker in the class, and begins spouting out directions in Spanish.  What was I suppose to do?!  She was telling me to 'Go open the door' or 'jump up and down' etc.  Super easy words for me, but vocabulary the class hadn't yet learned.  Everyone was amazed!  How did this girl know what to do?  She got everything the teacher said right away!  And I was standing there dying thinking, 'I'm fluent in Spanish but I didn't say anything because I didn't want all of you to feel bad!'  I couldn't say that NOW, everyone was feeling so much better about our progress.

After we were done she asked me in English in front of everyone- "See!?  How did you know how to do all those things?"  I stood there completely dumbfounded while Doug is cracking up in the back of the classroom.    There was no way in that situation that I could possibly have said, 'Well, actually, I'm a Spanish speaking return missionary'.  So I just stood there.  Luckily after a moment of awkward silence she answered for me. "See class, she doesn't even know how she knows them!  She's just picked them up during class!  You are all doing so great!"

How embarrassing!  Then for the rest of the classes I felt like I had to pretend I didn't know Spanish.  So awkward!  I'm so glad that we're done with that class!