I’m constipated. Seriously. I recently pooped for the first time since I left my house in the U.S. I left Saturday morning and finally pooped Tuesday. That’s four days of no pooping. I’m telling you this not because I’m crazy (which I am), but because I feel like this constipation is very symbolic of learning a language in a new place. Allow me to explain:

At first, you don’t feel like you even have to poop. You need some time. You don’t speak much. You’re just waiting it out. You’re enjoying being in a new place, but you are also too nervous to talk or poop. You are very thankful that people are understanding of not wanting/being able to speak much yet. In the same way, you are thankful that you don’t have to poop yet because pooping in a new place can be awkward at first (even though everybody does it).

Then you get a little gassy. You try a new food that your host mom serves you. You think that you could poop now, but you’re going to wait. You blurt out only words or short phrases as you grow more comfortable in this new location.

Then you lose all inhibitions and go for it (and by go for it, I mean when everybody is asleep or out of the apartment). You decide to not be embarrassed and just poop. Just speak whenever you have something to say, whether it is grammatically correct or not.

I suppose the moral of the story is, when learning a new language, one cannot be embarrassed to make mistakes. This constipation will only make it harder and harder to build up the courage to speak. Just poop already!

On a side note, the toilets do not flush the opposite direction compared to the U.S. (see my first post). They kind of just suck everything down. Now you can go hope, pray, cross fingers, wish upon a star, do whatever you have to do to ensure that I don’t get kicked off the Penn State Geoblog for writing about poop.

Location: Providencia, Santiago, Chile