Practicin´ My Victory Dance

The most amazing thing just happened. Angel and I were discussing schedules, scenery for my theater group, my future work with the cheerleaders here (who apparently "nobody knew existed") and the picture-taking he recruited me to do tommorrow during school practice for the 18th (dances and songs and what-not), and before I turned to leave, Angel put out his hand for me to shake. (He´s so bizarre sometimes, I thought to myself.) And then he said (in Spanish, obv), "I would like to congratulate you, because you´re Spanish is improving each day..." I hooted and threw my arms up and performed what I like to think is the universal dance for VICTORY (which is "vicotoria" in Spanish btw). I am improving! All those hours reading the dictionary and translating magazing articles and Madonna tabloids at the kitchen table are finally paying off. Por fin!!! I soooooooo want to improve my Spanish. I imagine this language like an imaginary wall I am knocking down around me every day that I learn a new word or finally realize the correct phrasing of a sentence I use daily. I am floating I tell you.

I compared myself to Dora´s two-year-old grand-daughter, Josefa, last week. She is in the learning phase, where she repeats everything she hears and absorbs new words like a sponge. I watch the news and find myself speaking to the t.v.. "Ahora tenemos una pausa." "U-na pau-sa," I repeat, entranced, letting the words find their rightful place in my mouth. As if to make them comfortable as they slip off my tongue, I repeat again, "una pausa." A commercial comes on with some (supposedly) famous soccer star holding a glass of milk and sitting beside his mother. I know how the commercial will end, I´ve seen it a million times, but regardless I must say it, "Tomate la leche!" I cry at the end, simultaneously proud of myself and loving the grammatical format of the command I have mastered. (If I ever need to tell someone else to drink their milk in Spanish, there will be no grammatical errors in my delivery.) I look up and Dorita is laughing at me (weird). I realize I have been repeating words that catch my ear for the past 15 minutes. And then it hits me, I am in the same stage as Josefa who says "he-llo" back to me every time I greet her. I am literally like a two-year-old. But it´s WORKING!

P.S.- The object I desire, more than any other material thing in the world, at this moment in my Chilean life-time, is a Spanish-English dictionary with every word that has ever existed inside. Mine is sufficient for now, but if anyone else is going to send me something, dear God let it be the fattest, most advanced Spanglish dictionary that has ever been realized. Gracias. Ciao.