Day 102 - Workbook

Last year when I studied Spanish in the lush gardens of a school in Antigua, Guatemala, I insisted on conversational practice; I steadfastly refused to study grammar.  I was kind of a brat about it, looking back, but I really just wanted to increase my fluency so that I could travel comfortably for the rest of my sabbatical.  I sat across from my teacher and laughed and laughed with them, chatting for hours.  We had a great time, but I certainly didn't perfect my verb tenses.  Still, I was effectively launched into my 3 month Latin American journey.  My Spanish got me by.

During my twice per week Spanish lessons this summer, my initial goal was different:  kill time.  Here I am in Alexandria, Virginia for the summer in my little apartment.  Stranded.  I thought I was going to have slow dripping hours to fill.  It turns out that between teaching and tutoring, I've been well-occupied--even busy.  There are even times I have wished for a day off.  

For the first couple of weeks of my summer lessons, I caught up with my Spanish teachers.  On Thursdays, I meet with Elba, a smiling sprite of a teacher I first studied with 18 years ago.  On Fridays, my teacher is Carmen, a raucous and sweet grandmother who greets me each week by proclaiming, "Mi amor!  Mi vida!"  We traded quarantine stories, and I learned lots of new pandemic-related vocabulary.  Our lessons are two hours long, and I was exhausted by the time 5 pm came.  

As the weeks progressed, I started to get frustrated by the frequency of the corrections of my verbs.  One day, I declared, I want to start from the beginning.  I decided to embrace the grammar rather than resist it.  So I ordered up a workbook, a thick one, the kind you buy with dread on the first day of Spanish class in college.  But I actually felt a little thrill when it arrived.  

Last year. it would have felt like tortura to sit still and fill in the blanks on stem-changing present tense verbs, but now it feels oddly soothing, the way people describe feeling while doing adult coloring books or needlepoint.  I sit upright at the table like a dutiful schoolgirl.  I even use a pencil.  I never write in pencil.  The time passes smoothly as I focus all of my attention on the logical rules of grammar.  I might not remember the rules, but they exist.  There is a right way to do it.  There is an answer.