Dia de Amor y Amistad - Reflections on our first days together

[whitey]

Today is El Dia del Amor y la Amistad in Colombia (Day of Love and Friendship - akin to our Valentine's Day), and it always puts me in mind of my first trip to Colombia and our first two weeks together in person.  This day is especially significant to me as well, because I chose it to formally ask Nazly to be my novia (girlfriend). 

Colombia is a little different from here in that respect as you don't just go on a few dates, start spending more time together, and then gradually at some point it's assumed you're in a mutually exclusive relationship ... you formally tell or ask the woman that you want her to be your novia or that you want to be novios.  Hopefully she agrees!

My first trip to Colombia was Sept 11, 2008 (thought I might be a good date to get cheap airfare and it was!).  Nazly and I had been penpals, Facebook friends, and gradually a little more for 9 months at that point.  The first time we laid eyes on each other in person was that night in the lobby of el Hotel el Prado.  She gave me one of her huge smiles that always melts my heart, we kissed and hugged, and I think both of us knew at that point things were going to go well between us.  Around a year and a half later, I took her on a pretense to that exact spot in the lobby, got down on my knee, and asked her to marry me.

Although we had been studying and practising Spanish and English together for 9 months, my Spanish was still woefully inadequate and not a lot better than caveman level.  It was also a little shocking and disappointing to realize that with the heavy costeno accent and rapid speech, I could barely understand a word anyone was saying.  With Nazly it was easier, because as those of you know who are learning languages and practising alot with one person, you become accustomed to their voice, speech patterns and vocabulary ... however ... it was still a struggle for us and often very frustrating for me not to be able to express myself the way I wanted to.

It helps that Nazly is a VERY patient and calm person - she has never expressed any frustration with my inability to understand something, and having her repeat something multiple times before I finally got the gist of it.  It is something that humbles me now and keeps me patient while she is learning English here. 

I choose to speak only in Spanish whenever I am in a Spanish-speaking country, and until Nazly came here to Canada, we spoke about 98% of the time in English.  That choice to learn Spanish, practice it, travel to Spanish speaking countries, and experience a deeper connection with people was the reason I met Nazly in the first place ... so it was important to me not to use English as a crutch.  Although it sure wasn't easy, it is one of the best decisions of my life.

Someone said to me just a few months before I started studying Spanish that "to have another language is to have another life."  I couldn't fully appreciate what he was saying at that time although it resonated with me, but now I do.  I am blessed to have two lives now ... a beautiful Spanish speaking wife, a new family in Colombia, and several good Colombian friends both in Colombia and here in Canada.

The first trip was for two weeks, and we were planning after a couple days in Barranquilla to meet her family, a few close friends, and see the city to run off and spend some time alone together in Santa Marta.  Although we were communicating fairly well with the frequent aid of a pocket dictionary and a lot of patience, and on a physical level things were great, I was concerned about going away together where we would be alone, just the two of us, 24 hours per day.

How was I going to romance this exotic, beautiful woman with hardly any Spanish?  What would we talk about?  How would I deal with all the travel logistics? How would I be at all interesting to this woman with my cave man Spanish?  It's very hard to show your personality and be charming and interesting and intelligent when you can barely speak ... and certainly doesn't do wonders for your self-confidence to always be the dumbest person in the room, never understanding anything.   

But, after a few more days I felt we were solid enough to make the trip to the beach to Santa Marta, and things were great.  On El Dia del Amor y la Amistad, which was Sept 20 that year, 9 days into my trip, I told her I wanted us to be novios ... and we've never looked back. 

[Jeff S]

Awwwwww....

[V_Man]

That's totally awesome Whitey!! 

[stnmasn]

very nice whitey  thanks for sharing all that with us.
 
It is interesting how everybody approaches things differently.


My wife and i took a different view when it comes to learning the others language.


 My wife of course received free english classes here in the USA. I don't know how much i agree with the free part but we benefited from the free part.  And she is a quick learner. She also wanted to find a job AS SOON AS she arrived and she did. After a couple different jobs she is now an spanish teacher and making a nice income and bringing excellent health benefits into the household. i am self employed so the health bennies were huge for us.


But we speak 97% spanish in the house because I want to be VERY fluent in spanish and she speaks english about 99% of the time when she is out of the house. So for us it made sense to speak spanish in house because she is surrounded by english the moment she leaves the house or has friends over to the house.


We go to colombia 2 to 3 times a year and the inlaws live with us for the summers so I wanted to become very fluent in spanish and i have. Mostly by speaking in the home and then the trips and also the desire that i have to learn it very well, made it a serious undertaking that I am sooooo glad i did. As you know whitey it opens up all kinds of neat doors,,, if only to get more answers in the crossword puzzles.


our son is 5 years old and fluid in both languages. When he gets out of car at his school in the morning it is like flicking a switch and he goes straight to english like it is NOTHING! Then after school the switch gets flicked and it is back to spanish. It is incredible to see and it is something that i am very proud of!!


So that is another reason to speak mostly spanish in house,, for the son. But the in home spanish program started 4 years before Jeronimo (our son) came along.


My wife has a friend from cuba who teaches spanish at her school and neither of her children speak a WORD of spanish and are now taking spanish at the high school level. It is embarrassing for her now. Her son is the worst in his spanish class. She could have helped them be more prepared for life if she had done something so simple as to teach them her native language when it is easiest to teach them,,,,,when they are young. And IT IS EASY!!!


I hope i haven't hijacked this thread too much. sorry if so. Not my intent I just want to share a little of our experiences as well.


anyhow Whitey  that was a great post you wrote and thanks again for sharing so much with us. We wish you both the best y muchos  mas dias del amor y amistad,,, juntos y felizes


Oh yea, in the little i can see of her in the avatar you post she is a BEAUTIFUL WOMAN and you guys look super happy. Congrats.

[Hector_Lavoe]

Whitey: Good to hear your relfections on building a successful relationship with your gal.  That Costena Spanish is really tough to decipher (at least it was for me). 
I wonder how long a flight it is/was from your neck of the woods in Canada to Barranqulla?   

[InnocentVixen]

whitey whenever I hear about Nazly and you it makes me smile, I can't say it enough, you guys are such a beautiful couple! happy colombian valentines day  ♥

[whitey]

whitey whenever I hear about Nazly and you it makes me smile, I can't say it enough, you guys are such a beautiful couple! happy colombian valentines day  ♥

Thanks IV - you're a sweetheart.  By the way, Nazly loves your avatar.  "Pobrecito gatito que nunca puede capturar la mariposa" ...

[whitey]

Whitey: Good to hear your relfections on building a successful relationship with your gal.  That Costena Spanish is really tough to decipher (at least it was for me). 
I wonder how long a flight it is/was from your neck of the woods in Canada to Barranqulla?   

Hi Hector:


I usually drive about 3 hours to Detroit, stay overnight near the airport, and catch an early flight on Spirit to Ft. Lauderdale and then to Cartagena.  The flights are around 6.5 hours in total I think.  Then approx. another 2 hours on a puerta-a-puerta to Barranquilla, unless Nazly meets me in Cartagena and we stay over for a few days first.


We're just in the process of planning our Christmas trip to Barranquilla.  Went to Toronto to the US consulate last week to get Nazly a tourist visa so we can take advantage of the cheaper flights out of Detroit ... but it's still killer in December.


You?

[whitey]

My wife of course received free english classes here in the USA. I don't know how much i agree with the free part but we benefited from the free part.  And she is a quick learner. She also wanted to find a job AS SOON AS she arrived and she did. After a couple different jobs she is now an spanish teacher and making a nice income and bringing excellent health benefits into the household. i am self employed so the health bennies were huge for us.


But we speak 97% spanish in the house because I want to be VERY fluent in spanish and she speaks english about 99% of the time when she is out of the house. So for us it made sense to speak spanish in house because she is surrounded by english the moment she leaves the house or has friends over to the house.

Congrats stnmasn - sounds like your wife really has a gift for languages and is doing well.  Nazly has been here almost a year, and should be ready to work within a few more months.  She doesn't have any natural gifts and has a pretty tough time with pronunciation, but she makes up for alot with determination and hard work.  She goes to school for 5-6 hours per day, and studies at night as well.


I hope to be in a position soon not too dis-similar to yours so that we can speak half the time at home in Spanish ... it's important to me that I improve as well.  I think it's hugely important that your son speaks the language and can fully participate in his joint culture.

I hope i haven't hijacked this thread too much. sorry if so. Not my intent I just want to share a little of our experiences as well.

Not at all ... hopefully others will join in with their experiences too.

anyhow Whitey  that was a great post you wrote and thanks again for sharing so much with us. We wish you both the best y muchos  mas dias del amor y amistad,,, juntos y felizes

Gracias - igualmente!

Oh yea, in the little i can see of her in the avatar you post she is a BEAUTIFUL WOMAN and you guys look super happy. Congrats.

:-)  Thanks ... and lucky for me even more beautiful inside.

[fathertime]

Thanks whitey and stnmasn, those are solid positive marital stories!  I think there are quite a few of them out there.     


 My wife and I spoke almost exclusivly spanish for the first couple years, i never considered my spanish better than intermediate though...it is just in the last 6 months or so that my wife started communicating in english and now it is almost all the time.  I'd probably forget all the spanish I worked so hard to learn, except that my kids are studying spanish in high school and middle school so I am keeping fresh and learning a few more things as well.  Our son is exposed to both languages and we both want him to maintain a firm grasp of spanish.  He has visited colombia twice already and most of his colombian family are strictly spanish speakers.  I read that when a young child is exposed to 2 languages it usually takes him a little longer to start spitting out words, although when the child does begin talking he can do it in both languages with relative ease.  I'm hoping that is the case with our boy.  How did that work with your boy stnmasn?  After hearing your story, i'm tempted to go back to keeping the communication in spanish around the house, it would be good for our son, but a little counter-productive for my wife I suppose. 


Fathertime!   

[whitey]

After hearing your story, i'm tempted to go back to keeping the communication in spanish around the house, it would be good for our son, but a little counter-productive for my wife I suppose. 
Fathertime!

Hey FT ... maybe you can still find ways to have a lot of Spanish in the house (or at least enough) for your son and you to continue learning, without unduly slowing up your wife's English.  For instance, you could have designated hours during the day for either English only or Spanish only.  Or, designated days.


I'm planning to designate one night in the week soon for Spanish only, then a month or two later two nights, until eventually we get to be around 50% or more in Spanish once Nazly is working.

[stnmasn]

Hi FT.  With our son it has been as much spanish as possible in his presence and so far it has worked out very well. He will be 5 yrs old in 3 weeks
 
Story: He started full time daycare at 10 months.... We speak mostly spanish en la casa........Once When he was round  3.5 years old or so I went to pick him up at daycare and the provider said to me "I want to tell you that your son speaks english as well or better than many others his age who  speak only english", and i said to her " really,,, he speaks english?" .......It is kinda weird but at that point i still only heard him speak in spanish so I really didn't know how well he spoke english. And it was soooo great to hear that from daycare that he spoke english so well.  Proud parent moment it was.
I still don't really  know how good his english is because i hear mostly  spanish but I am not worried.


I do have to say though when I hear some of his friends speaking in english some of them do seem more advanced than him in english,,,but just some of them seem more advanced not all,,,but then those advanced kids don't speak any spanish!!!


I am very proud and pleased that our son is so bilingual.  He is not quite 5 and has been to colombia 6 times.  His abuelos care for him in the summers up here in Vermont and they don't speak a word of english. He gets very little english in the summers.


I dont know if its the best approach, but its our approach and we are happy with the results we are seeing .

[robert angel]

A LOT of families with one spouse who is "English second language" raise kids who don't speak the foreign parent partner's language and in fact try not to. I think that's real unfortunate and that it leaves the kids without what could be a real advantage later on. Some of the parents, as well as some of the kids, have told me that "We're Americans now and English is OUR language".
 
I know one person who with a young child, doesn't want to push Japanese very much (the Mom's native language) while the child is still mastering English, so there are differing schools of thought out there.

 
It cracks me up to see an Asian kid and when I ask him or her: "What nation is your family orginally from?" and the kid sticks out his/her chest like a rooster and assertively says "We're AMERICAN!! Gotta love it. Never heard a kid say I'm Chinese-American, Vietnamese-American, Croatian-American, etc...

 
My sons are pretty well traveled, they follow politics and world events, yet despite being pretty knowledgable about current affairs, history and politics from left to right, they aren't greatly patriotic to any one culture or country. They're sort of more 'international' minded, thinking in global terms and are concerned about economic policy, the environment and how the world's nations act in ways that increasingly effect each other. I think they feel that most politicians are pretty much the same, regardless of party affiliation or nation.

 
Still, they are very active in participating in and training the younger kids in traditional Filipino dance, music and other activities at our annual Asian Festival, which brings tens of thousands of spectators every year. Sadly, although the boys have been to the Philippines, their Mother never made any effort to teach them much Tagalog--what they do know, they picked up from others, but they'll gear up for the festival, starting 5 or 6 months before it happens, for free, volunteering their own time.
 
There was about a year, where my older son didn't think it was 'cool' to be half Filipino, never mind one quarter Italian, one quarter Irish and 50% Filipino, all together. So he went around and told anyone who asked: "I'm Portuguese". Go figure....
 
Oh well, one of my sons speaks passable French, the other is in Honors Spanish and get's straight 'A's in that, so at least they're still bilingual in some language. They can swear in several other languages too, which I'm sure will be very helpful in taxi cabs.

[Hector_Lavoe]

I usually drive about 3 hours to Detroit, stay overnight near the airport, and catch an early flight on Spirit to Ft. Lauderdale and then to Cartagena.  The flights are around 6.5 hours in total I think.  Then approx. another 2 hours on a puerta-a-puerta to Barranquilla, unless Nazly meets me in Cartagena and we stay over for a few days first.

Thanks for the explanation.  That is one helluva treck for you to get to Barranquilla.  Makes your story all the more impressive. Obviously, it has been 100% worth it.