Can you: speak in Spanish for an entire day?

¿Hola?

That’s it. That’s pretty much the extent of our Spanish speaking abilities. Saya knows a few choice expletives and Amulya has a top-notch Shakira voice. Other than that, we’re pretty much useless.

Of course, being in Spanish 4 Honors and Spanish 3 respectively means that we both have the theory of Spanish down to a science. If you give us a grammar handout, we can complete in perfectly in minutes. Having an actual conversation, however, is a completely different story.

Neither of us has managed to perfect the fluidity with which native Spanish speakers converse, and when put on the spot and asked to say a grammatically correct sentence, we generally tend to clam up.

In a moment of great mental weakness, we decided that it might be a good idea to challenge our linguistic talents and speak only Spanish for the duration of an entire Friday. Bonus points for speaking with a telenovela (soap opera) voice.

The day started off easily, seeing as we both had our Spanish classes first thing in the morning, but Chemistry could have been potentially problematic. Thankfully, we had a test that period, so after the first few minutes of frantic review, we didn’t have to speak at all for approximately 90 minutes. We never thought that we would be thankful for a test, but in that moment, we were.

We’ve also never been so reluctant to finish a test.

The real party followed Chemistry when we exited the controlled environment of the classroom and were immediately bombarded by our inquisitive classmates.

“How did you do? What did you get for that one problem about that thing? What’s number two? What version of the test did you have?”

“Espero que … que … uhhh…”

Shoot.

We’d never quite appreciated the wonder that is charades until then. It seemed like no matter what we were trying to say, we ended up miming the action instead, often looking like we were doing the Mexican Hat Dance. We don’t even like that song.

This routine continued into lunch, where we performed a rain dance in the middle of the quad while trying to express our dislike of the day’s weather. Amulya also accidentally told a friend that she was pregnant (embarazada), but it turns out she was just embarrassed.

Saya managed to avoid public humiliation (for the most part) and took it upon herself to learn several different pick up lines in Spanish. (“Soy una ladrona y estoy aquí para robar su corazón” or “I am a thief here to steal your heart”). She then proceeded to repeat them to all of the attractive guys in the vicinity. It didn’t work out for her.

By the end of the school day, we were tired, frustrated, and craving Chipotle, but we went home and studied for Trig anyway.

Sitting through a few years of Spanish classes may help you get Language credits but nothing can help you when you are put on the spot to speak fluently to a group of people in a foreign language except practice. At least we can say that we tried. Thank you and goodbye.

Or rather, Gracias y adiós.