My first time to México was a lover's vacation to all-inclusive resort in Cancún in 2013. You know, cold beer handed to you right off the plane, making friends at the tiki bar, refilling your travel mugs with something frozen, something blue, and calling dibs on a beachfront lounge chair by draping your towel at 4:30 in the morning before the sun comes up. This first trip also awoke my then dormant abilities to speak Spanish. I hadn't uttered a lick of it (other than at 3am ordering from "Burrito House" in Chicago) since I couldn't even remember when.

With a bit of liquid courage (ok, quite a bit), I used Spanish everywhere -- with the waiters, the bus driver, the golf cart vendor, the guy who sold us the private snorkeling trip, and the cute entertainment-staff-pool-volleyball-coordinators-tequila-pourers. Suddenly, I remembered the difference between "arena" (sand) and "harina" (with a silent "h" and means wheat). I surprised myself: "I still remember Spanish from high school?!?!"

I became frustrated with the more difficult verb conjugations towards the end of senior year (grade 12, circa 1996), and decided that was enough Spanish for me. And, after the foreign-language assessment test in college which I passed with flying colores, I wiped my hands clean of this unnecessary elective. 

On New Year's Eve 1999 (yes, we were singing Prince's "Party Like it's '99" constantly!), I went with my bestie Kel on a trip to Madrid from my study-abroad stance in England (in London, to be exact, where now I was literally studying "English Literature" because a creative writing degree wouldn't transfer to the UK due to "colourful" writing differences). Kel and I were trying to find a hotel and everything was completely booked for the night.
We resolved to lock our giant backpacker backpacks in a public locker at a bus station and just try to STAY UP ALL NIGHT!!! After all, it's New Year's in Spain!

"I wonder what's going on tonight?" I wondered. (hehe) We saw a kiosk with newspapers and Kel made me go up and ask the guy because she was too nervous to use the language -- and SHE was the one who was going to be studying Spanish in Spain, not me! 

"Do you speak English?" I asked? "No," he scoffed and annoyingly turned his head away. "Pues, estoy buscando una guía para saber algo de los evento para celebrar el año nuevo. Ud. tiene algo así?" (I am looking for a guide  of events happening tonight to celebrate New Year's Eve. Do you happen to have something like this?") He turned, and with raised eyebrows, smiled and handed me exactly that, for which I paid, said "Gracias!" and walked away tall-shouldered and grinning. Spanish Saved New Year's! 

We partied with Australians and ate grapes as we did the countdown in Spanish (easy!). We hurled our empty champaign bottles into the middle of the thumping ring of celebratory Spaniards and cheered as the glass bits shattered in a fountain of new year's resolutions. (What? Everyone was doing it...) I sat in on a drum circle on Las Ramblas, and we played tug-of-war with a street thief who had unbuckled my fanny pack as Kel yelled "Ladrón!" (Theif!) I thought she was saying "ratón" (rat) which seemed applicable as well. We won! Spanish Saved New Year's!

We went dancing late into the night and wore out our feet and our dance cards. When we saw full-on families, including babies and 80-year-old grandmas, propped up against the mall's walls and totally passed out 4am in public, we knew it was cool to do the same. In the morning, we winded out way back to the backpacks, found a couple open beds to sleep the day away and celebrated the first day of 1999 with a romantic Italian pasta dinner in the capital of Spain.

Going back (or forward) to 2013 in México, I found that I had many instances where knowing Spanish saved the day, that by using the language I could actually communicate. I felt I had a superpower that I wasn't actively exercising! So, I began re-learning on my own, listening to music, reading Spanish text books I found at the thrift store, and only watching movies with Spanish subtitles. I didn't know what would come next in my life, but this learning topic interested me, I already had momentum, and who knew if it could maybe be a useful collaborator with my music and life planning?

Now, I am learning Spanish by my own motivation. I was determined to pick up where I had left off and speed right ahead. It has worked, but I also make mistakes every day. Keep focus on the small victories and the breakthroughs along the way, and you'll find yourself having more and more of them. Learning another language is a process, not check-marked task.

Today is December 29, 2019... A ver que va a pasar este Año Nuevo! (Let's see what happens this New Year!)

9/22/19 

It’s been raining all morning and I’m in a yurt in Seattle which is basically a giant deck, covered in tent walls and a big coffee filter-shaped rooftop. But this one is modern, a perfect studio apartment, with electricity and plumbing and even heated floors in the tiled bathroom. There are all kinds of quirky, smart, and thoughtful touches that perfectly reflect Stephen and Shannon, the owners who built this yurt two years ago as a guest suite/Airbnb/escape room. They live in the main house just 50 feet away and I live here for just two days. 

The domed center window on the ceiling of this Mongolian hut is dripping with raindrops which are also tapping at the rooftop. This feels like what we’ve learned to be a typical day in the Pacific Northwest. I awoke to chickens squawking in the neighbors yard and this rain that has been constant since 7:30am. Three hours later, I’ve managed to clean up last night’s mess, empty beer bottles and cans of spiked seltzer (they were all the rage this summer!) and I’ve stubbed my ankle twice on the bed frame while circling the futon. It’s just that kind of morning. My head is foggy, and now I know it’s that quarter cookie I ate at 10pm. I’m losing interest in marijuana as I realize it is a worse culprit for morning inefficiency and while it does encourage my brain to think more creatively, I don’t actually get down to the business of writing— words or music—and instead get to teeter-totter snacking, salty then sweet, salty then sweet, and go to bed alone and horny. 

As the coffee was brewing and I was cleaning up, I considered how I could turn this day around so that I could ultimately write it off as a productive one in some manner. I put sheet music on the piano stand to practice, but things are still moving too slowly to coordinate my mind with my fingers. With the rain and the gloom and little bit of a draft in the yurt, sitting to read seemed to be a better option to feed the brain. 

I spent about 10 minutes browsing the bookshelf, the top two tiers with novels too fat to even put a dent in before I hit the road again tomorrow to Portland. The third shelf has the travel books - New Orleans, Egypt, Croatia, foreign language - Spanish, German, guide books - the birds and the trees (not the bees) and secret staircases of Seattle. This one caught my interest since I had just climbed down and back up a giant staircase in West Seattle on Friday morning, the Thistle Street Staircase that descends to Lincoln Park. I walked in the woods, did a little forest bathing, and saw a sea otter pop her head out of the water. We stared at each other, and I kept focus with her big, round owl-eyes as I reached for my phone, but she dipped down under the water before I could capture a digital remembrance. I guess memory is the winner this time. 

The fourth shelf escorted me back through my college days, not unlike today, couch-sitting and reading. I had switched my major from music education to English with the intention of focusing on writing, specifically with the purpose of enhancing my skills as a lyricist. More than twenty years later, my life journey has guided me to music teaching jobs for preschool and elementary and also has inspired the penning of over 100 original musical compositions. I guess both degrees would have served me on my path and I’m right where I’m supposed to be anyway. But this rainy day is not compelling me to dive into Shakespeare or Dickens. 

Barely held together between Virginia Woolf and the Grapes of Wrath, a ripped spine caught my attention. I carefully tilted the book out of its tight parking space to reveal Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. I smiled to myself at this synchronicity, as I’ve just spent the past 4 weeks driving through Western Canada and am on the road for another 6 weeks. “How is it going?” everyone asks. Hmmm. How do I concisely summarize the crossing of paths with literally hundreds of people over a month’s time, covering nearly 4000 miles of badlands, the Rockies, waterways on ferries, sleeping in at least a dozen different beds by now and managing to stay relatively healthy despite being at the mercy of the meals that are generously prepared or purchased for me and daily happy hours with absolute saints who have offered to host me along the way? 

“It’s going really great! Wonderful shows, lots of adventures!” I say, assuming that they’re probably more interested in a quick summary anyway. 

But I do have stories to tell and details to flesh them out. I am following an unknown path and a lifestyle that I have designed for myself because it seemed like the less-traveled and more exciting route to take. I’m sure that some reflections will land in 3-minute songs, but I’m feeling once again connected to the desire to use words to relate them. So, just one chapter into this timeless recollection, I’m finding it’s time to start chronicling my own tattered bookshelf novel. Thanks, Jack!

How did you learn Spanish?

In junior high, we were asked to decide between taking Spanish or French. Even at 12, I knew that Spanish seemed a more practical choice in the U.S.  

I advanced to honors Spanish in high school. When I got to college, we had to take a language exam and I tested out. I wish I had taken that as a sign that I had a knack for the language, but I hit a frustration point on conjugating verbs and was happy to be done. A few years later, I visited Spain and my speaking skills got me through a couple tricky situations. But I still halted my learning.

Fast forward to 2013. I visited Cancún, my first time in México, and once again, the Spanish flowed out of me. I spoke with waitstaff at our resort, navigated the bus system, negotiated with beach vendors and had a full-on conversation with our privately-hired snorkel guide. Who knew I still had the word for "sand"? (arena)

Returning home after this trip, I had a new appreciation for the hidden talent that was my Spanish-speaking prowess, so I began again, this time accountable to myself. Using books from second hand stores, listening to music while reading lyrics, movies with subtitles, and apps like DuoLingo and SpanishD!ct, I started ramping up my knowledge again. I knew I had surpassed my high school level when the subjunctive tense was starting to make sense.

Immersion was now necessary. It made me nervous to turn down gigs for a month and leave my home while still paying the mortgage. But it was only for a month. And yet, that was a significant amount of time to subtract myself from my life. We even had a going-away party at a local bar and my friends made signs and stuff.

I enrolled in a class with IMAC in Guadalajara, Jalisco, México. I lived with a family. Well, it was just a woman named Carmen who had an apartment above her home. She was the sweetest and only spoke Spanish, so we'd catch up over dinner every night. I had to take the bus 45 minutes to get to class for 4 hours a day, and then my classmate Meshel and I would pick a bar and do our homework. I joined a gym, went to a Chivas soccer game, visited the towns of Tequila, Tlaquepaque, Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende. 

When the month was done, I took a 6-hour bus to the beach town of Puerto Vallarta where I'd meet my sister (flying in from Chicago) for a few days of vacation before returning home. I got off the bus in my jeans and was immediately hit with humidity. I loved it. I smiled the whole cab ride to my hostel. There was something in the air. Definitely the salt, but also this combination of warmth, beach, culture, music, and a small town vibe, the opposite of what I had just left in Guadalajara or Chicago.

I fell in love with this place during our 5-day vacay. When I returned to Chicago, I was pretty bummed to be in the cold and back to my part-time teaching job. I needed a change, but felt tied to my mortgage and regular rhythm. I needed guidance. I needed a coach....