A update on how I'm doing

Well hey there!  I just finished writing in my journal and what had started out as extremely negative, transformed into something completely positive.  Something finally clicked in my head and a revelation was made about my time here.  I also feel like this entry accurately sums up everything I would want to say to people about my trip, but would never be able to tell it so many times in the exact same way, therefore, I am turning this journal entry into my next post.  The only things that are necessary to know before you read is that the class I talk about had two professors, and I was spending the night at Annalise’s homestay this night.  The following is a direct quote from my journal that I’ve been keeping during my time here:

28-6-12

6:28 am

I just woke up because I dreamt that I was being covered by a blanket and suffocated.  I didn’t know where I was and it scared me.  After a few moments, I realized I was laying on a mattress in Annalise’s homestay house.  This calmed me only momentarily because then I started to feel uncomfortable lying there Not the kind of uncomfortable that comes from needing to rearrange myself, the kind of uneasiness and discomfort that can only come from Hell.   I became irrationally afraid of the dark, I reverted back to being a child again, who is afraid that the monsters will get you if you even had one toe off the bed.  This made me want to curl up into a ball to make sure that none of me was off the mattress, but that was too hot.  It became so hot overnight that I found myself absently scratching at my fingers in the exact spot my eczema flares up when it’s humid or there’s a rapid change in temperature—something that hasn’t happened for weeks.

I tried to go back to sleep, but every time I closed my eyes I was sucked back into the nightmare of having a sheet or a blanket over my entire body, not being able to see what was going on, being surrounded by evil creatures of the night.  Immediately all my thoughts would get jumbled and I wouldn’t be able to think straight, wouldn’t be able to warn anyone of the evil dangers that were all around, waiting to try and mess with them.  I laid awake, too terrified to move, too scared to try and close my eyes, but too scared to do anything about it.  I tried calling out silently to God, but instead of the loving, comforting embrace I so richly desired, I saw instead an image of a spiritual battle.  The arms of God were trying to reach out to me, trying to get to me to hold me and to comfort me, but the darkness was too much and too strong. 

I was left in the darkness.

That image terrified me.  Am I so estranged from God that I have let darkness fill my life?  Not wanting to disturb her slumber, I let Annalise sleep on, but soon my fear became so crippling that I knew I could not stay on that mattress, scared to stretch out but too hot to be balled up, for an indefinite number of hours.  I had to wake her up.  When I explained what was happening, she gave me her hand and immediately started praying.  The only thing I could think, however, was “You need to write, you need to write, you need to write” over and over and over again. 

I immediately became grateful I remembered this journal and a pen—although I’m certain Annalise would have let me use paper and pen of hers.  There’s just something satisfying knowing that I can write my own words directly into my journal on pages that are less likely to fall out.  So now, a glass of ice water and an open window later, I write.

I want to write about all the darkness that has been in my life recently, and although I know a few things off the top of my head, I have no idea where this will lead.  My only goal is that by the end of it, I feel a release of the darkness and an abundance of the light…and then hopefully I will be able to sleep deeply and soundly.  I was so tired before, so exhausted and in need of sleep, but closing my eyes only brought sheer terror, and so awake I remained.

The first and most (currently) prominent right now is that I failed the final for my Antropología y Arqueología class.  They failed me.  If they had known how hard I worked on that paper, maybe they would have been more lenient, but they didn’t and they weren’t.  They told me my Spanish was pretty bad and that it was obvious in my paper that I didn’t have much experience using it.  They said my sentences were weak and after searching for a word for a while they just kind of looked down and came up with the word “basic”.  Then they moved on to the content of the paper and asked if I had gone to get help from the student aid/helper person for foreign students and I admitted I hadn’t and they just looked at each other and said Yeah, there’s obviously a lack of understanding about what we talked about in class and you definitely should have gone to get help.  I think I was just too honest with them.  I told them I had been working on the paper for three days, I hadn’t read anything for the class (I didn’t want to B.S. that because I’m certain they would have asked me questions about it later and I would have nothing to say), and that I couldn’t elaborate on any points from my paper because all that I knew was in the paper and I really couldn’t elaborate more than that.  They even asked me if I wanted to take the exam in English instead of Spanish.  Is my Spanish so bad that people really can’t understand what I’m trying to say when I speak?

They started off by telling me that my Spanish was terrible.  That is NO WAY to start any sort of exam or evaluation—my confidence was shattered and so of course I was second-guessing everything I wanted to say and trying not to use more words than absolutely necessary. But my efforts were not enough. I still failed.  What bothers me is that I tried. I tried so hard to keep myself motivated for that class even though it doesn’t count for anything.  And even though I didn’t give up, I still failed.  And that sucks.  It sucks that I could have done nothing and ended up with the same result.  It sucks that I made a conscious (and tough) decision to keep going, and it didn’t even matter.  And not only that, I became ashamed to call myself a Spanish major.

That’s what it comes down to.  I feel like I have let so many people down by failing that exam.

I let the Hope College Spanish Department down, I let the Cuban, Spanish-speaking side of my family down, which means I let my dad down.

I know none of that should actually be true (I can’t even write that none of it IS true) but it all feels so true.  That was the pressure I have been carrying around with me this whole time.  This was my test to see if I really should be a Spanish major, if I’m Cuban enough to actually know the language of my father, if I’ll ever amount to anything in the Spanish-speaking world.  And I failed.  So now I don’t know what to do.  At this point I’m too ashamed to look anything/anyone Spanish-related in the eye…which makes me fear for my online-Spanish class.  But maybe that class can be the remedy.  Maybe that class can show me that I’m not that bad at Spanish and I just happened to encounter two of the rudest professors of my life at a critical moment.  But then, is Hope College spoiling me?  Am I being lured into a false sense of ability in speaking Spanish?  What if I actually suck at it and they just have a crappy Major program? What if I get out into the real world and find that as much as I want to help people, I actually can’t…I can only try to make them feel a little bit better (maybe) with basic phrases and simple words?          

            Well then, that’s what I’m going to do.

            I never felt called to learn perfect Spanish, I only felt called to work with women in Spanish-speaking countries and figured that it might be helpful to know the language.  I’ve been thinking about this all wrong.  I’m not studying Spanish because it’s something that I should have already known how to do, I’m studying it because I knew nothing about it and wanted to learn it because it would be helpful in the line of work I want to be in.  It’s ok that I’m not perfect at Spanish, I was never expected to be.  And this has all been a learning experience for me.  Hope College’s Spanish Department will be proud of me for going to Argentina and being in another culture, and trying even though it didn’t work out how I wanted it to.  My Cuban Spanish-speaking family (which includes my dad) will be proud of me for spending a whole semester down here and (even if it didn’t seem like it) improving my Spanish in any way.  Also, just the fact that I am down here at all is an accomplishment.  I’ve learned so much and done so much that it’s crazy the growth that has happened.  I’m fairly certain it’s a pretty big change in me, but I think I’ll wait for the opinions of friends and family members when I get back…in 3 days.  Well, I leave in 3 days, get back in 4.

You know, all of these things (positive revelations, that is) are things that other people could have told me (in fact I’m sure some people have at least tried to tell me a few of these), but there are just some things in the revelation process that just need to be realized on one’s own, by oneself.

And now that I have finally come to this realization, I finally have peace.  And now that I finally have peace, I finally can sleep.

So good night (for now) and I will see you again soon.

-Kiki

And that is the story of my revelations about my trip in Argentina.  I’m glad that you took the time to read it because this is pretty much the best kind of update I can give you about my life right now.