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May 15, 2007
An Empty House
I’m all alone in an empty house.
Ben’s gone and the car is not in the driveway. I sit in silence at the kitchen table and hear nothing but the sounds of the birds chirping outside the window and the planes rushing overhead.
Someone I know is probably in one of those planes. Someone I know is probably up there.
And as I sit alone at this kitchen table, eating my eggs and drinking my Jamaica, I think about my time here; more specifically, I think about what got me here in the first place.
I think of Señorita Hernández.
I think of my high school Spanish teacher with overwhelming gratification—how she first introduced me to the Spanish language back when I was in middle school and how she taught my final class of Spanish before I entered into college.
And I think that perhaps, had it not been for the nice person that she was (and still is), I wouldn’t have been so eager to continue with my Spanish education—I wouldn’t have had the same “rush” to learn a new language, to learn of new cultures.
As I recall my AP class, I also think of all the grammar that we learned—pluscuamperfecto, presente perfecto, subjuntivo, etc. It all seemed so terrible at the moment; now I see that studying grammar was so worth it.
Thanks to Señorita Hernández and the material that she presented us with, I came to México with a much more advanced vocabulary than most other American students here; I came with much better preparation in conversational Spanish.
It would be a shame to leave México without thinking of the preparation that got me here...
Posted by jlsumich at May 15, 2007 02:02 PM