Spanish is my new skinny

When I was in high school and college, I always had these big plans during every break that somehow I would come back skinny and everyone would think I was amazing and want to be my friend. I would walk in on the first day of school and everyone would say "Is that April - wow she looks great" and all the popular people would rush up to invite me to their houses.

I've pretty much gotten over that by now. I guess six years of school will teach you something, if nothing other than that summer holidays do not lead to miraculous body changes unless surgery is involved. Now I've realized that Spanish is my new skinny.

I spent the last 2.5 years living in Madrid and trying to varying degrees to learn Spanish while living and working in an English-saturated environment. The longer you live in a foreign country, the more embarrassing it becomes that you are not yet fluent in the language. Sure, I've gotten to the point that I can order a meal at a restaurant, potentially even with flair, but I'm not really fooling anyone other than my parents. So, when we decided to move to a small town on the east coast of Spain this year, the secret little thought popped into my head "when we visit Madrid, I'll wow everyone with my newfound ability to speak Spanish."

My plan this whole time has been that I would come back fluent and everyone would think I was amazing. Before we visited in November I thought "we'll go to our friends house who speak Spanish and English and spend the whole night in Spanish." When that didn't happen, I though when we visited at Christmas "when I see Mati (with whom I usually converse in English) at the Christmas service, I'll only speak to her in Spanish and she'll be so impressed at my improvement." I'm not sure if it didn't happen because of habit or because I didn't want her to actually be unimpressed at my de-provement.

This is when I realized that Spanish is my new skinny. When I can speak Spanish fluently, I will have arrived as a social contributor. When I can speak Spanish fluently, all of life will be better, miraculously. I'm beginning to wonder if I should skip the six years of school and realize that in most instances, lasting change does not come about without quite a bit of hard work and dedication. At least, since as far as I know, there isn't a surgery that can make me speak Spanish.