I shouldn't be surprised

...but I am. Apparently Spanish is finally worming its way into the center of my brain.

Last week I had a dream where I was speaking Spanish. Just the Spanish I know, that I use every day.

Yesterday I went to the dining hall and saw that lunch was charquican stew. I started talking to myself and said, "Hmm, do I quiero charquican for lunch?". (Quiero is "I want.")

Today the school had Independence Week activities instead of classes, so I chatted with a bunch of students, and with one group, I actually used the Chilean word po to emphasize something, without consciously thinking I needed to--I was very surprised when it came out.

(Spanish is not stressed like English, so if you say something like "Of course it's not happening that way!", that stress on "course" doesn't mean a whole lot to Spanish speakers. Chileans add po to a phrase for emphasis, and for a lot of other things I don't understand, but I haven't been able to use it naturally and I've only just started using it consciously, because otherwise I can't communicate the emphasis I want.)

Finally, during the student dance competition, I was chatting with Jorge the English teacher, and several times I thought something in English, intended to say it in English, and was very surprised to hear myself say it in Spanish.

Job interviews will be interesting when I get back.

weird dream

I had some sort of adventure-dream last night, which is common for the stuff I remember. There was a casino, a very strange elevator with cars two stories high and full-length wooden doors, and the cars moved like buckets on a Ferris wheel. Secret agents, occasional gunfire, the usual.

Right at the beginning, though, I discovered I'd traveled to Mexico, but managed to leave my passport at home. The Mexico of the dream was a really, really bad place to not have your passport, so I was getting really stressed and anxious. Suddenly I thought, "Wait a second. This is my story I'm in, so I'm going to back it up a bit, and start right from this place and time, but with my passport, so I won't be anxious." And then my passport was in my hand, and I relaxed and continued on with the adventure.

Neat. We can do this every day in our waking life, making decisions about how we're going to respond to events as they unfold. We just have to realize it's our story and we can do what we want with it.