By choosing ITTO Guadalajara for my TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) training, I get a free week of Spanish language instruction at IMAC, ITTO’s sister school, prior to the start of the course. The whole point of TEFL is that you learn immersion techniques for teaching English to students whose native language you don’t speak, so I don’t need to learn Spanish for my four-week TEFL course.

I need to learn Spanish because four weeks is a long time to stand there like an idiot when someone speaks to me in Spanish.

Having lived in mostly-Spanish speaking neighborhoods in Chicago and Los Angeles for the last 30 years, you’d think I’d be able to carry on a simple conversation en espanol. Sure, I can order a taco para llevar like nobody’s business, and thanks to many years of studying Latin and French, I can figure out a lot of printed material, but my speaking skills are tragic. Had you been eavesdropping on today’s class, you’d think you had wandered into a preschool for three-year-olds with brain damage:

“Does he interested in hip-hop?”

“Yes. He have many hobbies.”

Our first class yesterday focused on introductions: name, age, country of origin — that sort of thing. But really, the first lesson I learned was not part of the curriculum; it’s that in order to grow, sometimes you have to let go of your vanity and be willing to present yourself to the world as a stuttering idiot. No doubt, fear of failure and humiliation are what kept me from trying to speak Spanish for so long (although, in my defense, having been told once by a Frenchman, “Oh my ears! Speak English!,” my fear was not entirely ungrounded…).

I may not learn all that much Spanish in the next week, but it’s good to be reminded that there are worse things in life than looking like a moron.