Cavewoman Make First Joke

As we’re walking down the street looking for our restaurant, a man sitting on the curb tosses a balled up piece of paper into a trash can about eight feet away. Brittany exclaims “Dos Puntos!”

The man looks up and smiles at us as we continue to walk by.

“Brittany!!! “That was our first Spanish joke!!” I exclaim jubilantly. I gave her a big high five. (Technically it was her first Spanish joke and I am still yet to make one, but in that proud moment I took shared credit for our newly discovered Spanish wit).

On the surface “dos puntos” was nothing more than a fleeting moment of shared understanding between strangers — something you wouldn’t even take notice of if it happened in English. But it wasn’t in English. It was in Spanish. And, yes it was just a small victory but it kind of felt like a milestone.

One of our primary goals for our adventure, in fact our primary goal for our adventure is to learn Spanish.

I wont pretend to be an expert when it comes to language learning, far from it. I’m pretty much as bad as they come. But from what I’ve read in blogs the key seems to be to just throw yourself into the fray and start speaking despite the fact that you are going to sound like a caveman. One blog post (I think it may have been Tim Ferriss') said something along the lines of:

On day one, you might not be able to say “excuse me, kind sir, can you please tell me where the nearest lavatory is” but if you’re jumping up and down, doing the pee dance saying “bano, bano!” people are going to get the picture.

I think he’s right. Fear is what holds us back from succeeding at all things in life. But as Brittany pointed out to me the other day, there’s really not a whole lot to be afraid of.

She asked me rhetorically,

Have you ever once in your life laughed or made fun of someone who was learning English for mispronouncing or misconjugating a word?

Of course I hadn’t. “If anything,” she said, “you probably admired their courage or found it endearing.”

She’s right. It was so obvious once she flipped the positions.

For the rest of our adventure we’re going to try our best to shed our inhibitions around sounding stupid and fully embrace our caveman roots.