I want to learn Spanish.

About a week ago, I decided that I would like to take the summer (or possibly the next year) to learn Spanish. It will change my marketability, career-wise, and help me to communicate better within my profession. Thus, the summer idea was born. Here are my current ideas.

1. Bogata, Columbia
2. Somewhere in Mexico where I know people
3. Venezuela to be a political radical
4. Argentina to find Slovenians
5. And the old favorite, your single brother/uncle/cousin's abode in Chile where I can walk around topless care-free?

I am scared to leave for a long time. The last time I left the country, my whole life changed, and I like my life right now. I don't want my life to be drastically different. I know that regardless of whether I travel abroad, completing school will be a drastic change, and I'm not sure if I'm ready for much more than that.

I am not an alien.

 

When I was seven or eight (or nine?), at Sunday School, we were asked to draw what our life would look like when we were 26. I wrote that I would be a professional ballerina. That was what I wanted to be; I worked like a maniac to be that person, and it didn't work out. My body didn't have what I needed to go as far with dancing as I wanted to go. Then the same thing happened with swimming. My body didn't have what it took.

So now my life is different that I thought it would be. The faces are different from the old faces. The people who were in my life at ages seven, eight, and nine, are no longer in my everyday life. Not a one. And that is strange. I don't have all the markers people commonly have that remind them who they were, and how they became who they are. That disconnect is jarring sometimes. It's normal for a person in my situation, but it's still jarring.

I talk about this stuff a lot, because it's central to my everyday functioning. Sometimes I have to remind myself daily that I'm still real, that I'm a person. I am not an alien. I am not invisible.