Learning Spanish, Finalmente
And why it has been one transformative life experience.
When I started watching Hollywood movies, I immediately branched out into foreign films as well. Since I was never into sci-fi, action, or superhero movies, I guess I naturally gravitated toward dramas from different parts of the world. In my selected list of acclaimed foreign movies, most were Spanish or Italian. The more I watched Spanish movies (both from Spain and Latin America), the more fascinated I became with the culture and language. So, if I ever had to learn a language, I knew it’d be Spanish.
As fate would have it, when I was applying to colleges in Florida and Barcelona, I decided to join a Spanish class in Nepal. While I did learn (more like memorised) a few Spanish phrases and basic conjugation (everything in the present tense, obviously), I was too occupied with other things at the time. (My all-time reality and excuse.) Plus, I’ve always had this attitude of “I will learn when I need to.”
Needless to say, when I landed in Barcelona for my studies, I was casually confident about learning Spanish. Except one week into college, I knew it would be my last priority. With so much new and diverse stuff (from arcane mathematics to computing) to learn, and homework and projects piling up, learning one more thing was out of the question. Plus, I had two other factors pushing my…
