Multilingual

I've been to surfing turtle a few times on the weekend, just for the day. I think it's my favorite because it's quiet, no body cat calls at me, and there are fun travelers to talk to about their adventures. This weekend I had enough time on Friday to come out and spend the night for the first time. It was the usual swimming, sunning, and volleyball with the bonus of having some cool girls from Maryland, a Dutch couple, and a Canadian/Egyptian couple to talk to. I love hearing travel stories from other people. Americans should travel like Germans and Canadians do. I've met a ton of Germans and Canadians here, but not a lot of Americans, except at this fancy beach hostel. I mean it's beautiful, but you can't really learn about a country if you don't live there a little while. 

Maybe it's because we have boat loads of debt when we're done with college, so there's no way to spend the summer after college volunteering in a Nicaraguan after school program (that's what the German and Swiss people in my hotel are doing). Maybe we don't speak enough languages. I was in the kitchen with two of my Swiss/German friends and a French couple walked by. My friends attempted some French, but ultimately were very disappointed in themselves for not being able so speak more French. These are the girls who natively speak German, talk to me in nearly perfect English, and spend their days teaching Nica kids in Spanish. But they really thought they should also be fluent in French. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only American who is pretty proud of herself for being reasonably fluent in one other language. I'll admit, this trip has made me think maybe I should have learned some German (like Charlotte McNabb) in high school. It would be much easier to talk with my hotel mates. 

I'm going to pretend like it's because we don't have nearby countries to travel to and practice our new languages (… please ignore Mexico and the French Canadians - they're so far away). A Dutch couple from Surfing Turtle told me that (in some schools) they study English from the age of 4, and by high school are studying German, English, French, and Spanish. I don't know how much of it they remember, but can you imagine an American school being successful at that? Another girl in the Surfing Turtle conversation told me that she teaches elementary school in Maryland and that her school is implementing "integrated" Spanish curriculum where they insert Spanish phrases into the usual, day-to-day lessons. At first I thought that sounded ok (after a certain age, it's impossible to pick up an accent if you've never heard it. Why not expose kids to a bit of another language at an early age?). Then she told be that the promotional video for the program featured a principal saying "Hola!" with her thick Wisconsinian accent… maybe not as helpful as I thought. 

I don't have any pics for this, so here are a few bonuses:

Storm rolling towards the Cathedral

I leave for a few months and my parents do this… I love those crazy kids.