He llegado

Long time no post. My apologies. The flight from Seattle to Tenerife consisted of 4 different legs (Seattle -> New York -> London -> Madrid -> Tenerife) so I suppose in hindsight it was a bit unreasonable to expect everything to go smoothly. The flight from Heathrow to Madrid was delayed for a few hours so I missed my connecting flight to Tenerife. I got my first attempt at trying to communicate in Spanish at the customer service window in order to get booked on the later flight:

• What I think I said after thinking furiously in line: “I need to change my ticket” (Necesito cambiar mi billete)
• What I hear in response: “wah-wah-wah-wah-wah” and then some pointing to the other side of the counter.

I swear it was exactly like the teacher in Peanuts. And this has pretty much become a common theme for me. I’d say I can only pick up 5-10% of what people are saying (and I think lots of those successes are due to the Spanish words that sounds like English). If I ask someone to repeat it again more slowly, most of the time I still can’t understand it.

Anyway, its pretty late by the time I arrive in Tenerife and the buses are no longer running from Aeropuerto Norte to Puerto de la Cruz so I get a taxi instead. I tell him where I want to go (Quiero ir a esta direcction. Yes, I thought about this for a good minute while standing in line) and he has a puzzled look on his face. He then gets out of the taxi to ask a buddy if he knows where the place is. Not a good sign. Many enjoyable hijinx ensue while we drive around looking for the place and he starts asking me questions and I can’t understand a damn thing and am just doing the “uhhhh, lo siento. no entiendo” routine which, coincidentally, I am getting quite good at.

But, we manage to find it (Puerto isn’t a real big city) and the family is very friendly and happy to see me. Currently, I am the only student staying here but I think there is another one from Holland arriving tonight. Anyway, I am a bit discouraged at the moment at how pathetic my Spanish is but the island itself is pretty spectacular and its fun to talk to the people at school from other countries (in English for me since I can’t actually have a real conversation in Spanish).

More later.