Dance class

Four months ago when my Spanish professor was encouraging me to study abroad, she told me about The Semana Santa (Holy Week) and the Feria de Sevilla (Seville Fair) that happen in Sevilla every year, saying over and over again how fun it is and how important it is to know the traditional dances. And I, being generally too trusting of authority figures, gave in and signed up for a Regional Folk Dance Class.

Fast forward to this afternoon, and you will find a flustered and confused Sam, standing in the corner of the Center’s patio, turning in the opposite direction of everyone else, and frantically trying to keep the correct arm flailing through the air in sync with the correct leg.

So my Spanish dance class is terrifying. It involves a lot of coordinated hand and leg movements, and I think at one moment my hands are supposed to look like a butterfly. As you can tell, I have no idea what is going on. Today, I had to be partners with the teacher because she could tell that I wasn’t catching on. She asked me what the problem was (in Spanish, mind you) and I mumbled something about not knowing the difference between left (izquierda) and right (derecha). So that was a bummer. I try to convince people that I’m perfect (secret is out!), and when they can see that I’m not, it freaks me out.

As you might be able to guess, being here in Sevilla is really shaking things up for me a lot. I feel like I’m hardly in control of anything. I have no idea what people are saying to me 75% of the time and even if I do understand them, I struggle to figure out how to formulate an answer. I feel like I never get to have meaningful conversations with people, unless I’m cheating and speaking in English. It’s just overwhelming me to see how much I don’t know yet, and I’m so tired of being corrected for saying things incorrectly.