the madness of language

A big objective of this trip is to have a more fluid control of spanish by the time I come back to the states. Now that I'm a month in, I know that I can get the gist of most important conversations.

But that's not enough!! It's like having blurry vision that's only in black and white; I can see enough to not trip on a piece of furniture, but I'm not getting the nuances, the sharp lines, the colors. Sadly I fill in all the missing details with my assumptions and shoulder shrugs. A good friend said that I have an obvious face for when I'm no longer present in a conversation because of all the spanish. 

One of the issues is that I don't have a grasp on pronunciations. My brain is still mapping out sentences as they come in. Examples of a few blunders that I had the courage to challenge as they happened: 

• ​"hecho de menos" is what my brain wrote out when my friend said "echo de menos el hospital". He said "I miss the hospital", and my brain translated as "hospital made of 'de menos'" which made no sense. But hecho and echo sound the same!
• "pudiera de ver dada la vuelta" is what my brain wrote out when someone said "pudiera haber dado la vuelta"  (you could have made the turn-around). What my brain wrote made no sense but haber and de ver sound the same!
• in english we say i'm, he's, n', etc... chilean spanish does this but to the max. Sentences often just sound like a series of space-syllable-space-syllable-space-syllable. It's impossible to understand. 

Before I go about feeling too badly myself for crawling up this mountain, non-native english speakers have to learn how to differentiate "close" "closed" "closet" and "through" "threw" "thorough" "though".

Still I'm getting a little tired of needing to defend myself every time i hear "Ella no me entendió." My knee jerk reaction is to be frustrated and angry. Dudes, sometimes I do understand! And when you say that, it's rude. 

Positives for today: 

• My friend Diego understood all of the frustrations I expressed above. It was so nice to be validated by someone who is chilean. 
• Josefa (4 y/o) and I took our first ever walk/adventure together! We walked to the local supermarket to buy ourselves doughnuts :) The only rule was that she was not allowed to stop holding my hand. It was so fun!
• I ate doughnuts. 
• Tonight, my host family helped me edit my first "words/modismos" blog entry to the correct spelling :)
• I advocated for my elderly female patient today with a Candida rash. The doc (male) wanted to wait for ALT and AST to return before treating it with oral antifungals, so after the visit, I ran after the patient's daughter to educate her on how to buy the anti-itch OTC steroidal/antifungal cream in the meantime. 
• The lineup for Chile's Lalapalooza in March came out recently! Pearl Jam Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Killers, Imagine Dragons, Lana Del Rey, LCD sound system, Chance the Rapper, Wiz Khalifa, KYGO, Galantis, Milky Chance, Spoon are just those that I recognize!!! Gonna be crazy!!