D.W.E.

Now Hester is gone, and Clea has stopped through, Sarah and I are by ourselves (in terms of amigos de Neuva Zealanda). This means our dynamic has changed. The first big decision we have made in this new situation is to start a competition: Days Without English.

We decided to do this competition on the day of Clea leaving. Despite the sound principal behind this we were both had a lot of trepidation. To get leverage, and overcome our fears, we agreed on a penalty for losing. The penalty is both practicable and more vexing than not complying: the loser has to be the winners slave for seven days.

The first day of D.W.E. was exhausting and exasperating in that “first day of school in a new town” kind of way. Fear, awkwardness and lack of habituation made the experience highly un-enjoyable. Por suerte! The following day things started to flow a bit better. In our favour - usefully – when we went to watch Game One of the NBA Playoffs (finals) we were able to explain to our (fluent speaking) friend, Steph, that we were having a competition and therefore assuage the inconvenience of our limited vocabulary. In the end Steph was a big help with our Spanish. Who would have thunkit? This shit actually works.

The competition has also made us more involved in our tarea and we have both started reading juvenile literature in Spanish. I’ve picked up the very fly Watch Tower illustrated bible entitled Aprendamos Del Gran Maestro. My favourite chapter is titled ´¿Cómo abemos que el Armagedón está cerca?´ (literally: ´How Do We Know That Armageddon Is Close?´, ha-ha!). This combined with our bedroom wall - that is slowly being covered with verb and vocab charts - it has become a fun process.

I must say that having this frequency of Spanish speaking is making Bolivia a lot more interesting for us. It is also starting to make me feel a little agitated. It is, at times, disheartening to be expressing myself with such a limited vocabulary.

My limited vocabulary produces blunt and callow sounding assertions. It is quite funny at first. And then it is just isolating. This feeling of agitation and isolation is the next “brick wall” (thank you Randy Pausch) to circumvent. And in the meantime I am getting acutely in touch with body language, too. Where would we be without our bodies to communicate?

I look forward to finding out what other emotions and reactions I will assign to my life during this chapter. We have agreed that the competition will go for four weeks. After that we will continue to live our lives inside the Spanish language but allow ourselves the pleasure of speaking our native tongue with fellow volunteers and travellers.

Amen.