Still Struggling!

Here I am what a year later and still...nothing. I can follow a conversation...a very slow conversation...spoken in a dialect and accent that I am familiar with. I know I am not the first nor will I be the last to struggle over learning a new language,but I certainly believe my progress is the slowest in history!
But this too I shall overcome!!!
After all is that not what life is, but a series of struggles and obstacles for us to overcome and then revel in sweet VICTORY? 
This was my choice to become part of this vibrant and lively culture to learn and live ,speak and eat,and feel as they do. So vamenos!

Personal Space

There is a scene in one of my husband's favorite movies, where the young daughter of a Mexican woman uses a very common American phrase " not right now I just need some space". Her mother's response? She gets right in her child's face and tells her in a thick Spanish accent " there is no a space between us."
 The concept of "personal space" is one that seems perfectly normal to me, having grown up here in the states,but when I saw that scene I began to think about just how that concept is truly an American way of thinking.
Imagine living not only with your immediate family in an apartment or small house, but then add  an or two aunts and some uncles, a few cousins,perhaps a grandmother; and suddenly you do not have much space at all..let alone "personal space".
Being alone is really not an option...I can appreciate the differences, and I can see why it sparked fear in the young girls' mother, seeing and hearing her daughter's assimilation into a foreign culture that was so different from her own; and the one she was  so desperate to pass on to her child.
I can see it and appreciate it, but sometimes...I just NEED to say " not right now, I just need  some space".And I am perfectly fine with the fact that it is a very Gringa thing to say!   

Social Profiling.

Being married to a Latino for nearly fifteen years, has opened my eyes,and changed my thinking in ways one would never imagine; but still there are some things that you can be told about, and have explained to you, that you can not really get,or truly understand,that is, until it happens to you..
 The other night I went with a friend for dinner at a local Italian restaurant, just two Moms needing to get away.Wanting to treat my dear friend I left my credit card with the hostess,with instructions of charging the bill to my card. Seems simple enough..mmm..apparently not.
 My first clue should have been how our waiter tried (not so discreetly )to identify the owner of the card.  How so? When he came to our table to take our drink order , as he was leaving he tried asking my friend something, neither one of us knew what, so being silly I told her he was hitting on her, because she is a beautiful...wait for the eye opener...Latina.She of course laughed it off, until time after time when our social pro-filer IE: our waiter , would come to our table trying to engage her in obscure, and in my opinion unprofessional conversations,and upon reflection I would say he was trying to detect an accent .I knew something was off, I just could not put my finger on it....until (dramatic pause) he came to give us the bill.As he approached our table holding unbeknownst to him MY credit card with an obvious Spanish surname on it....he began to hand it to, well..the woman who "looked " like the one that name would belong to...and that definitely was not me!  I quickly snatched it out of my dear friends hand before all of my careful and brilliant plans of treating her to dinner went up in smoke.As I snatched the billfold out of her hands proclaiming to be the owner of the card and there-by the owner of the name I saw a brief, but apparent flicker of confusion in the man's eyes .
After saying my goodbyes, I sat in my car and reflected on the fact that what had happened was only what my husband and millions of other "minority" people go through on a regular basis...I had been socially profiled...
My husband, of course,got a kick out of it! Not in a vindictive "good how does it feel" kind of way, but more in a.."now you can see what I go through, and why I have to be more assertive and advocate for myself" kind of way.Because what they say is really true , " god forbid you ever have to walk a mile in his shoes,because then you really might know what it's like..."  to be socially profiled.