Cuernavaca: Baffling and Beautiful, part 2 - Lost!

Cuernavaca

I’m not known for my directional skills. However, once I discovered GPS and Google Maps on my iPhone, I felt like a reasonably competent adult … until I got to Cuernavaca. I’m sure it was me, but, for some reason, most of my time in Cuernavaca, I was LOST! 

I’d start off with my destination carefully plugged into my phone and before long I would be in some scary place with neon signs blinking: You’re lost! Run! So, I would SOS Uber and they would rescue me.

There is a multi-level, rabbit-warren of a mercado in Cuernavaca. I’m sure lost civilizations wound up there when their climates collapsed, and they’re still there, selling pig tongues and hand-made shoes. 

Anyway, on one of my point-A to point-B, estimated time 35 minutes, excursions, I wound up at that mercado. In my mind, I could walk up the six flights of stairs, cross the mercado, go down six flights of stairs, and come out on the other side and be in the right place. Wait … don’t get ahead of me.

So, off I went, up the six flights of stairs, down one flight, a block or so off to the right, up another flight … ask a nice person who pointed “that way.” A block or so that way, down a flight of stairs, to another nice person, who pointed in a different “that way.” Rinse and repeat until I finally saw daylight again and six flights of stairs down … where I wound up exactly where I went in … and called Uber.

This pattern (minus the mercado) reoccured for two weeks. And, there’s no reason. If you look at the map, the routes between #1 (my home-stay) and #2 (school) and #3 (Cafe Colíbri, where I spent a lot of my time, were pretty straight shots. I think there’s a magnetic field there that threw me off track or messed with my GPS. After two weeks, if I didn’t take any detours, and held my phone the entire way, I finally managed to make it school without Uber.

Blame it on the forces of the earth

Maybe it was that malignant magnetic field that made me drop out after my first class of the Spanish Immersion program.

Background: I have been half-assed trying to learn Spanish for about 30 years. Net result: nil. 

 

Four years ago, I got serious and went to San Miguel de Allende for an immersion session that didn’t work out well. For several “very good reasons,” the classes didn’t work for me. I left SMA and went to San Cristóbal de las Casas and spent four months theoretically studying Spanish but spending the bulk of my time researching learning processes and finding resources for studying Spanish. 

By the time I went back to California, my Spanish bubble hadn’t moved noticeably.

When I moved to Ajijic, my determination to learn Spanish skyrocketed, however, little action followed that determination. Finally a friend showed me her Warren Hardy Spanish workbook and it looked well-organized so I bought all four workbooks and began. Eleven months later, I finished the 600-pages of grammar, verb tenses and gosh-awful boring lessons. I was ready to try immersion again. I knew I might have a problem when I took an online exam to test my Spanish listening skills … and failed … utterly.

The immersion course I chose also offered a multitude of activities focused on women’s issues in Mexico. I was excited to break into a new level of Spanish and find out more about the culture of Mexico. The first day, we met the teachers and students, ran through an overview of the program, and had our first outing to the historic district of Cuernavaca. So far, so good.

The next morning we went into our first class and within an hour, I knew I was in trouble. I was hoping for a magic wand that would lift me over the Wall of Fear that was keeping me from speaking Spanish. I also needed drills on listening to and learning the sounds of Spanish. What I got was a lesson on grammar from the first level of the Warren Hardy workbooks I had finished the year before.

Crisis! The teachers and everyone at the school were NICE. They wanted to help us. I’d paid a lot of money for this experience. The self-conversation went something like this:

ME: I can’t do this for two weeks.

Adult Me: Just do it … it will be good review.

ME: No! I will die of boredom.

Adult Me: You’re here. Just shut up and make the best of it.

ME: No! I’d rather never learn Spanish than sit through this for two weeks!

Adult Me: You're being a brat! You can’t hurt their feelings. They’re really nice people.

At the first break, I told the teacher that I was having a problem and she seemed sympathetic. I later learned that, while the teachers spoke English, having a complex conversation was very difficult. By lunch, with my insides still screaming, I went to the head of the school to see if my teacher had talked with him. She hadn’t. I told him I wanted to do self-study instead of classes. He didn’t understand and I wasn’t completely sure I did either. 

 

Recognizing my own needs and style of learning

This book opened my mind.

The self-conversation went on all the rest of the day and into the night. I finally realized that I was in danger of dropping out of Spanish altogether if I didn’t find a way to learn on my own, in my own way, and in my own time. That night I plunged into the internet, trying to find answers and new resources. And, amazing stuff showed up.

By the next morning, I had a plan. I would do self-study during class time (basically half of each day) but attend all the school's cultural activities. I also knew that I had to hold onto the plan even if the teachers didn’t understand. This was my learning journey and it was important enough to me that I had to find a way to help them understand why I needed to do it my way.

While this new program didn’t keep me from getting lost on my many excursions around Cuernavaca, I no longer had that sense that I was mentally and emotionally lost, and on the wrong path. 

 

I committed to listening more, speaking more and began to develop a program for me. Suddenly, learning Spanish was fun again. 

 

More about Cuernavaca:  

 

Cuernavaca: Baffling and Beautiful, part 1 - the Arrival