Mekensie Therrien: Learning Spanish in Madrid: A Bridge, a Vessel

I recall a day in the warm, familiar hall of Tandem Escuela Internacional, where students gathered regularly to read about the weekly activities and excursions our teachers had planned. A group of us was chatting. Most every day was like this; after our morning classes, we students congregated in the hall, on the stairs, or at the coffee machine to eat sandwiches from our lunch packs. We talked, made friends, shared inside jokes, and told each other about “home” and our adventures outside of it, before returning to our cozy classrooms for second block. It was a very comfortable time for me, and I relished the closeness I felt to my new friends and caring teachers in our microculture.

Mekensie, from the ramparts of La Alhambra in Granada, Spain

This one day in particular, however, I was stricken with the realization that I, without noticing, had grown comfortable speaking a second language. Upon arriving in Madrid, I quickly realized just how much Spanish I did not know.  Adjusting took several weeks, and a great helping of encouragement from my host mom and teachers. Then suddenly, there I was, in awe of the fact that a language that was not my own had done something incredible for me. I was standing in a group of people from multiple different countries, totally different backgrounds, and entirely different languages. I was speaking to them, laughing with them, understanding and getting to know them, yet that day I was the only English-speaker present.

I felt an intense sensation of community with the world in that moment, a connection to people that I would have never known otherwise. I was able to discuss meaningful things with friends from Thailand, Germany, Korea, Brazil, and other countries far away from Tandem, due entirely to the common knowledge of a language that none of us grew up with.

Kevin (Chicago), Chris (Lander), Gayle (Scotland), Josh (Lander), and Mekensie  sharing a meal in Granada, Spain

New students cycled in, and our friends cycled out of classes. All of our programs were different lengths, and few of us remained for an entire semester or longer. Eventually, Spanish and I became well enough acquainted that I could help new, English-speaking students understand what our excursion guides were explaining to us about the the culture of Chueca, or the history of Gran Vía. This was my first true  experience in translating, and I loved seeing people’s proverbial light bulbs flicker on as the information fit together, and smile as they started gathering the important facts for themselves without help.

In these ways, I started experiencing Spanish as a bridge. I had never fully appreciated how amazing language is before I was unable to communicate as I normally can. Language allows us to tell each other what might have been had an event in our lives gone differently, or what we would do if we had the chance to time travel. We can play on words, flirt, drop hints, make clever jokes, and offer hypothetical solutions to potential problems. All of these things require a mastery of language that I was used to having. At home, I had taken advantage of English connecting me effortlessly to everyone in my family, town, university, and even to people I met who were still learning English. Yet even considering how easily my native language is manipulated by my mind, I cannot fully describe the emotion I felt when I began gaining the ability to express myself fully through a second language. It was at about that point in my semester abroad that our very diverse group had that enlightening conversation in the hall.

Spanish became very special to me, beyond my simple, long held dream to be bilingual; it became special to me because I realized the countless doors it had opened from my mind to the rest of the world. Growing competent in Spanish felt like crossing a rickety, ancient rope bridge, densely surrounded by fog. The farther I ventured in the first few weeks, the more confusing everything became, but by the end of the semester, the fog had cleared significantly, and I could see the end of the bridge a few months farther toward the horizon. I did not have the chance to stay long enough to achieve fluency, but now I occasionally catch myself taking my biology notes in Spanish.

Josh and Mekensie visiting Palacio Cristal in Madrid, Spain

Beyond acting as a path from my comfortable cow pasture of a hometown, to a sprawling city across the sea, my Spanish journey has led me down narrow ways to individual people, to brief moments of joy meant just for me to experience.

I traveled to Italy during Semana Santa, and was surprised to learn that, opposed to what I had been told, very few people there spoke Spanish, and even fewer spoke English. In Florence, I spent several days struggling to ask directions and for recommendations for less-touristy restaurants.

Mekensie hiking in the foothills of Florence, Italy

Mekensie by the Colosseum in Rome, Italy

At the end of the second or third day, exhausted from exploring marvelous museums and barely eating, I hunted for a place that would feed me. The eating times in Europe are very different than in the US, and those in Italy were even more different than what I had grown accustomed to in Spain.

Long and at last, I stumbled upon the only open restaurant around. It served Peruvian cuisine, prepared by a family, with recipes brought with them from an ocean away. The familiar sound of a Spanish conversation met me as I opened the door, and the relief I felt to hear a language I understood was enough to bring real, genuine tears to my eyes. The waitress was surprised that I addressed her as eagerly as I did, and in her language, and we ended up having a very welcome conversation about each other’s travels. I may be biased, but Peruvian food was some of the best I had in all of Italy.

Even after tearful goodbyes, a case of reverse-homesickness, and a bland reintroduction into reality, Spanish has continued to give me numerous, meaningful connections. Over the summer, I worked in a food packaging facility a few miles from my house. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my podunk hometown has a huge Hispanic population, many of whom live within walking distance of this factory. I was pleasantly surprised to be one out of about sixty people from the US, out of about 1,000 first shift employees. I became our area’s unofficial (and unpaid) translator. Communication problems were rampant at the facility, which harmed production, quality of production, employee cohesion, and general morale. The job was pretty unpleasant, honestly, and I grieved for myself each morning as I drug my feeble corpse out of bed at 0400 to go stand on my feet for hours on end in the freezing cold building.

Chris, Mekensie, and Josh posing with Begoña, the director of Tandem

However, socially, I loved the job. I made wonderful friends from all over the world, and exercised my lingual abilities constantly. My favorite part of working was being able to ease conflict, help relay instructions, learn phrases and idioms unique to certain countries, and form unexpectedly strong bonds with a very diverse crew. In a thankless job, the friends I made worked together to lift each other’s spirits and enjoy our less-than-enjoyable work. Within a week of being hired, I could hear my name being shouted in various accents across the fruit pack area to come help a friend translate an important message.

Profesoras Mabel and Queralt posing with Mekensie at Tandem

Being one of only a few translators gave me such an encouraging sense of purpose in an otherwise disheartening job, and I looked forward to it every day. I felt like a superhero for the first time since I was a little kid.

I regularly helped a bristly, middle-aged man from California communicate things to other supplies handers like not to take his tub of cantaloupe because we needed it for a batch of Fruit Medleys. I loved being able to translate to him how grateful the rest of our group was for his hard work, and seeing him soften as he realized that everyone at our table appreciated and relied on him. I cherish the windows I saw through into my friends’ home countries and cultures. I fondly recall singing work songs with them, laughing hysterically over things as silly as smashing granola by hand, plotting whom to hit with a grape, and explaining to each other our favorite lyrics and what they meant to us.

I owe all of those wonderful memories to the skills Spain taught me. I owe my appreciation for communicating to a country in which I could not communicate. It took exploring another continent for me to be able to connect with people I never knew lived and worked a few miles down the road I grew up on. My time abroad may not have been the transformative journey I had come to expect, revealing the meaning of life to my pilgrim spirit once I was deemed truly worthy of enlightenment, but I have been encouraged by my experience to consider the importance of understanding others and oneself. Knowing others is a beautiful part of being alive, and I have learned to see that more fully. With Spanish as my vessel, I have had the opportunity to communicate the contents of my soul to some truly wonderful human beings, receive the contents of theirs, and be for others the bridge that my second language was for me.     

MekensieTherrien is a junior Psychology/Spanish major, who plans to graduate from Lander University in 2020. She spent three months, from January until April of 2018, in Madrid, Spain. Mekensie hopes to build a career in therapeutic horsemanship for at-risk and Spanish-speaking youth after graduation.

Mekensie on the lawn of Galleria Borghese in Rome, Italy