El Centro de Idiomas de la Universidad Veracruzana

The day before my 2-week Semana Santa vacation, my friend Sachiko brought me to the language building of the university where she had just started volunteering in “conversation clubs” for people studying English who want to practice with native speakers. As it turns out, I’m really good at speaking English. After an hour with Sachiko’s group, I talked to the director, who was very excited to get another English speaker involved in the program. So now I lead my own sessions two or three times a week! (Well, obviously not these last weeks.)

Each session is with a different level and a different combination of people. The participants sign up in the library, and the number of people on the list varies each day. Some of the students who attend these club sessions are studying English on their own, rather than taking a class from the university, so there are adults who come too. I’ve been really impressed with the initiative taken by some of the people who come to practice solely for their own benefit without receiving class credit.

One of the English teachers at the Centro de Idiomas caught me on my way out one day and begged me to come to her class. “The students be so glad to talk to someone who knows English!” So a couple of times I’ve gone into her classroom and been questioned by 30 or 40 English-studying students for half of the class period. It’s a cool way to meet people. They like to talk about the differences between Mexico and the United States. I’ve learned a few unexpected stereotypes that they have about us norteamericanos (a word that only applies to people from the U.S., at least in Mexican Spanish).

I’ve encountered a strange phenomenon in the language center. For most of the lower-level students, my Spanish is much better than their English. I’ve gotten accustomed to stumbling my way through conversations in Spanish, and it’s a lot more difficult than I would have expected to force myself to speak English in the presence of someone who looks like they can’t understand what I’m saying. I’m not going to lie, after being unable to communicate properly for the last four and a half months, it’s nice to feel smart enough to have a language down that other people are learning. And I like that I don’t have to hide saying “Wow!” or “Oh, no!” or other little English interjections that generally slip out while I’m trying to hold a conversation in Spanish.

Another issue I’m running into is when communicating with the English teachers and the director of the language center: Of course they can speak English, probably better than I can speak Spanish, but sometimes they struggle through sentences or even say “Oh, how do I say this to you in English?” I always tell them that they should just talk to me in Spanish, because I can comprehend a lot more than my choppy Spanish responses would suggest. It’s hard to know whether I should try to change the conversation into Spanish or let them struggle through the English. A lot of the U.S. students with me here feel insulted when Mexicans try to switch over to English in the middle of a conversation. It’s interesting to be on the other end of that while I’m still in Mexico.