We’ve had a productive few days in Malaga. If productive means drinking lots of wine, buying delicious fresh produce (who knew that Malaga grows mangos?!), and two delightful days hanging out at the beach. To be fair, we also got the initial grocery orders for the house, I found an optometrist who could order a replacement RGP hard contact lens for me (let’s hope it works – couldn’t get the same brand), we interviewed potential Spanish teachers, and lined up a meeting with a fitness coach.
Spanish Lessons
I’ve been pleased to see how much Spanish I retained during our absence. In fact, as when I’d learned French, I think there’s been a consolidation, so I’m actually understanding more and able to communicate better than I was 19 months ago. Admittedly, I did resume watching Spanish shows on Netflix a few weeks ago, just to help get my mind back into the language. I may soon be at the point where I can watch with the subtitles in Spanish instead of English!
That said, I’m eager to kick my learning back into high gear while we are here. We had been happy with the Spanish school we went to last time we lived in Malaga, but they aren’t answering emails or Facebook messages, and the office space they used to be in is no longer occupied, so I guess they didn’t survive Covid. Too bad.
Instead, I posted in a couple of expat Facebook groups for teacher recommendations and got a few. One turned out not to be based in Malaga city, but the contrast between the other two was interesting. The first one, Sandra, offered to have a preliminary meeting with us at a downtown café. I was struck by the fact that her focus was on assessing (through conversation) where we were linguistically. DH and I have very different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to Spanish.
When we lived in Peru for three months he was working for the Peruvian government and having meetings in Spanish (with a translator available) every day. His ability to read and his knowledge of technical (engineering) Spanish are quite good, but he didn’t really learn any grammar or verb tenses. I, on the other hand, took lessons while he was working, so I’ve learned the basics of grammar and verb tenses but have a much more limited vocabulary.
Interestingly, although in general our daughter’s personality is very much like his and our son’s like mine, when it comes to languages they switch. Like DH, our son just wants to be able to communicate. When he was 18 and we lived in southern France for a year he played on the local football (soccer) team. He learned how to swear with the best of them and managed enough colloquial French to survive a job as a bartender in town. Our daughter (then 16) went to a local academic high school and was terrified of making mistakes. As a result, it took her a lot longer to start speaking. Once she did, however, it was with much more accuracy and sophistication than her brother. In the end, they can both get by in French. À chacun son gout.
When we’d been here previously, DH and I had separate instructors teaching us at the same time. It was ideal, because one or the other of us would have been frustrated had we tried to learn together. This time, though, having separate lessons would mean either separate times or separate locations since we won’t be in a school. Sandra felt confident, after speaking with us, that we could be in a class together as long as DH is willing to do some grammar homework before classes.
Unfortunately for us, she did do a bit of a “bait ‘n switch” because her schedule is quite full, but she has a colleague with whom she collaborates and assures us the colleague shares her philosophy and teaching style and will work out well for us. [UPDATE – December 2021: Sandra totally had us pegged. I suspect we had much more in common with Rocío, the teacher we ended up with, than we would have with Sandra, and it made for a delightful three months of learning and countless interesting conversations. We hope to work with her again when we return next fall!]
Later in the day we had a Zoom meeting with another potential instructor. He had been flexible about whether to have the preliminary meeting via Zoom or in person. In retrospect, he put himself at a disadvantage by not pushing for an in-person meeting. Can’t blame him completely: we were at the beach for the Zoom meeting, so it was not the easiest thing to concentrate or hear him. But what struck me more was that, although he seems really nice (and his wife is a writer, so I’d love to meet her!), his focus in the conversation was more about him and less about assessing where we were at, linguistically. He didn’t seem to have much of a thought-through approach to how he would teach us. He basically said, I can teach you whatever you want. As a marketer, I know that even though it is tempting to say you can do everything, it inspires greater confidence if you specialize or have some way to define your niche. He has an impressive background, having taught Spanish at several American universities, but that isn’t the same as one-on-one classes with adult learners. I expect he’d be fine, but in the end we opted to give Sandra’s colleague a try.
Allergy Life
In other news, my allergic reaction still hasn’t cleared my system completely. It has been a full three weeks since it started with an accidental cross-contamination from a bun at the Bon Ton bakery. My throat is still swollen, my breathing not great, and my ears and jaw still hurt in the way they do before vomiting when having anaphylaxis. I’ve used up all the steroid meds and am almost out of the prescription antihistamines. But the thing is, it is no worse. It is at a level that is annoying, but I can live with it. I keep debating whether to try to get in to see an allergist. It would have to be via a private doctor, or else the wait would probably be longer than the length of time we’ll be here. But it isn’t obvious that they would be able to do much anyway. Unless it gets worse, I think I’ll just accept that this is the new normal for now. When I was in hospital before leaving Edmonton the doctor put in a referral for me to an Edmonton allergist. Odds are that appointment will be about the time we get back to Canada anyway.
Fitness Progress
Despite the constrained breathing, I’ve been delighted to see how much fitter I am than pre-Covid. The weight loss and daily walks over the past 18 months made a huge difference. I used to find the 2 km hike up the hill from the beach back to our apartment here in Malaga was tiring. Now it is easy. The key is to keep myself walking as much as I was in Edmonton. There I scheduled walks with friends for 1 or 2 hours almost every day but here I’ve got nobody to walk with other than DH, and he’s going running every morning. He’s happy to walk with me as well, but it is far too easy to let laziness take root without the pressure of social commitments to non-family. I must not let that happen. I also need to keep tabs on how much wine I’m drinking. In Edmonton I had a rule about only drinking alcohol twice a week, but here it just seems so natural to have a nice glass (or few) of wine and some nibblies on the deck when we get home after a day at the beach. Maybe it is worth buying a scale even though we are only going to be here temporarily, just to keep myself on track. I had hinted to the landlord, but he didn’t seem to think a scale was a necessary thing to provide to holiday renters. Silly him.
