Settling In, So To Speak

Things have calmed down a bit at the office. We're slaying errors, having meetings and generally getting a handle on how the process will work for spring semester (which just ended and needs certifying).

Our move to the third floor is on hold. Most of the furniture is out of storage and arranged in the new space, but there's no wall/door in the are where I am likely to sit; until we can secure the area, it doesn't make sense to move. And my supervisor said if we move before the wall is built, they won't do it.

Meanwhile, I'm getting used to campus practices and quirks. Like the relentless use of "ma'am" in the workplace. I don't know whether it's a Southern politeness thing, a deference to the gringas thing or both.

You know how you pick up expressions and speech patterns from friends? If I hear it constantly, how long before I start "ma'am-ing" people around me? Perhaps that will be around the same time I start answering people's questions in Spanglish.

None of the gringas in our office are fluent in Spanish. I've never said how much (or how little) Spanish I speak, so I'm not really included in the conversations the native speakers carry on. They go too fast for me to pick out more than a few words, pero since I hear them mixing Spanish and English I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I start doing the same--albeit con my pequeño vocabulary.

The other fun thing is trying to pronounce all the Spanish surnames. My tongue gets tied up over Guajardo; I want to say it right but I don't want to sound like I'm straining to enunciate, so I end up getting it mostly right if a little mumbly.

At least I don't mangle names as badly as the university's voice mail system. It flattens all the music out of Spanish names. Take Alicia Villareal. Properly said, it should come out like Ah-lee-cee-ah Vi-ya-rey-ahl. But the voice mail system asks me if I want to leave a message for A-li si-ah Vil-la-ree-al and puts the stress on all the wrong syllables.

I have fantasies of chiming into a conversation with impeccable Spanish, surprising my colleagues (and making them wonder how much I understood all along, although I'm fairly sure they don't say much about me. Then I remember that in Spanish, I have the linguistic prowess of a four-year-old and they'd have to be asking where I live, what my name is or where's the nearest toilet for my fantasy to play out as imagined.