Language Barriers

Half of the term is gone now. Time has passed really fast and I have learned a lot of new things business-wise and personally.

Being in Washington D.C. through The Washington Center means having activities all the time. Monday programming (conferences and workshops), program assignments, assignments and exams from the course and of course the internship. This has helped me to be more organized with my time, because there are a lot of things to do every day and little time. And of course you have to add the home duties: laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning the apartment, etc.

Yesterday we were invited to a studio at the Newseum to see a show called Close-Up on C-SPAN. There was a host and two guests: Clarance Page, a writer for the Chicago Tribune, and David Brooks from the New York Times. The topic was media coverage of the 2008 election. They were discussing whether the media is biased against or in favor of the presidential and vice presidential candidates. It was very interesting and light, not very complicated for me to understand. We were allowed to ask questions or say our point of view. I wanted to speak up, but I was kind of self-conscious because I didn’t want to be the only non-native English speaker. Besides, when I get nervous I forget my English, and I probably just would have made them stop recording a few times because I would have forgotten how to say a phrase in the middle of my comments. So I just sat and watched. I'd rather embarrass myself on a local channel another time rather than on a show that is broadcast nationally.

Here is the studio for Close-Up

Yesterday I met with some friends to go and watch the last presidential debate, and before the debates we were talking. A girl was talking about how difficult it was for a non-native English speaker to fit in with the English speakers. What she was saying is quite right. Sometimes even though you are with people that you would be very good friends with in your country, here you can’t really be yourself. This is because of language barriers. Sometimes you want to jump in a conversation but you don’t find the words, and you have two options: jump in and don’t know how to say something or just stay quiet. If you go for the “jump in” you will probably just look awkward, especially when you are trying to say a joke and nobody understands, those are the worst jaja. Or if you choose to stay quiet everybody thinks you are a quiet person, when in reality in your country everybody knows you because you never shut up. So it is very difficult to be really who you are in another language.

Tomorrow I start working in a new division of my agency, Voice of America. I will be working in the Latin America division, and though this won’t be helpful for improving my language skills, I will learn new things. I kind of look forward to starting there, and the people there are very cool. Mike, if you are reading this, I like the people in the Internet division a lot too jaja (Mike is my supervisor in the Internet division).

Now we are going down the hill, time is going fast and there are a lot of goals to achieve. I hope I will go back to Mexico with no regrets.

Here we are outside Georgetown University