PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

I was born in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. I grew up speaking Spanish. The type of Spanish I speak is called Castellano. Having a Caucasian father learned to speak English when I first came to the United States at the age of seven. I have had good experiences and bad experiences with language. When I first moved to the United States, I remember going to school became very frustrating. The frustration was rooted from my lacking of the ability to comprehend what my teachers were saying. One time during my first grade year, I was playing during recess and I remember me speaking in to the only other girl who spoke Spanish in my class and she asked me who my crush was. I pointed to my the first grade crush. That day, I found out that some friends aren't really friends. She ran to my crush and said "She likes you" while she was pointing at me. I was MORTIFIED. I knew that she had betrayed my trust and had told my crush that I liked him. At the point, my only goal was to learn how to say "She's lying" so I asked my ex- friend how I said "lying" to my foreign ears it sounded like "lion". Thus, I quickly ran over to my first grade crush and I start screaming "SHE LION, SHE LION", instead of "SHE'S LYING, SHE'S LYING". I cringe and laugh just thinking about my first grade self manically screaming something that didn't make sense. This was an old memory and it's funny now but to my first year self it was mortifying and embarrassing. Well the story does have the an upside. My first grade crush reciprocated the feeling by holding my hand very awkwardly while we were standing in line. But that's besides the point. There was another time where I was at work on the cash register, and the customer I was tending to was Hispanic, and we were speaking Spanish to one another. I could feel the judging stares from the lady who was next in line. I could feel the animosity, After the Hispanic lady left, the lady who was silently judging me threw her stuff onto the register and ignored me most of the time. These two experiences weren't the most positive. But there has been  a lot of positive moments too. I have been the bridge to people communicating and obtaining the information they need while acting as a translator. With language comes consequences but at the end it's worth it.