First day

So officially today was my first Guarani slip. I was talking to a friend over Skype, didn´t hear right and said, "Mba´e?" (What?) That´s funny.

Another friend also enjoyed making fun of me. "Guarani, good, because that will be so useful when you come home." But I have faith, mark my words, that there will be one event that makes me say "Ha! Now it was all worth it!" He suggested Guarani might save a life. I was thinking more along the lines of just really telling someone off in Guarani who said something creepy they didn´t think I´d understand.

Proceeding in a language comes in growth spurts, and I´m having one of mine. I´d say I speak about 20 percent in Guarani now. At lunch, I was almost surprised, like I was in the twilight zone, that I understood what people were saying. Little things like "Go go more water" or "Where´d you put my cell phone?" I understand. Long conversations, I´m still lost.

Some things come to me easier in Guarani. The word "to laugh" is hard for me to conjugate in Spanish and easier in Guarani. Sometimes when I´m trying to write, I ask my brain for a synonym and it gives me a Guarani word.

I also have this fantasy. I hear there´s a pretty big Paraguayan neighborhood in New York City. So yeah, it´s the future, I´m just walking down the street, blond white chick. I walk into a little store with a Paraguayan owner and just start going off: "Mba´echapa. Che vare´a ha aheka hina chipa. " (Hello, I´m hungry and looking for some chipa.) And then his head explodes. Or he just laughs and we have a good conversation. Maybe if I move to New York I can move to this mystical neighborhood. Or I´ll just continue the current plan of convincing people I speak in tongues.