Asesoría

I hold a regular office hour, an asesoría, at Café Tal, to be available to students for questions and discussion outside of class. When I'm not meeting with a student, I'm the one getting a lesson. I sit at one of the tiny, wobbly tables next to a window that opens to the street, with a book open in front of me like a shield, and I practice the art of eavesdropping to try to absorb all the Spanish around me. As people walk by the window or gather at nearby tables, I try to make myself invisible behind my book, and I strain to hear recognizable words and phrases in their conversations. I catch the placeholder words first - pues (well), entonces (then), pero (but) - and numbers. A child trots by with his mother and I hear, "pero, por qué. . ." (but, why?) Four teenage girls, laughing and checking their cell phones, talk about jewelry: "La plata me cuesta cuatro mil pesos. . ." (the silver cost me 4,000 pesos!?!). It's good and interesting practice in listening and in observing human behavior, and I get to remain anonymous. It's a kind of retreat from the rest of the time when - still - I feel like I'm running naked through conversations, exposing all the words I don't know or can't string together.

Evasion and exposure. This is how I'm developing my Spanish.