And so it begins again....

         Today I registered for Fall classes at UCSB, which means I am officially coming back, for better or for worse. It would have been nice if the 9-hour time difference between Spain and California also applied to our pass-times, but alas...
         I made the decision to sign up for German 1, which both excites and intimidates the hell out of me. There is a possibility that I might change my major slightly (don't freak out Mom and Dad, I'll still graduate on time), and if I do this then I am required to take a second language that isn't from the Romance family. My sister's got Russian covered, and since Chinese and Arabic are 5 days a week and German is only 4, well...that decision was basically made for me. Also, I know that Chinese is going to take over the world pretty soon, but learning a whole new alphabet and memorizing thousands of little pictures sounds like unnecessary stress in my final year of college.
        Even if I don't end up changing my major, I realized through being in Spain that learning languages is my one true academic passion. So THIS is what it feels like to actually be interested in a college subject!! I decided that I should take advantage of the fact that I'm already paying tuition in order to learn a new language, and not dish out all my life savings later in life when I may want to take private language classes. But I have to admit, part of me is absolutely terrified about starting German. I began learning Spanish so long ago that the world, and myself, were unrecognizable. In 7th grade when I started memorizing words like "rubia," "guapo," and "me gusta," Bush was president; I still wore glasses and I hope to God I shaved my legs by then but I am just not sure that's the case. When I started conjugating the present tense I was so naive that I thought "yo bebo" could only refer to juice or water. I've been studying the past tenses since I entered high school and to this day, after 9 months abroad in a Spanish speaking country, I still have trouble between the preterite and imperfect. I've spent more than a third of my life trying to memorize new verbs and idioms and vocabulary, and I STILL learn seemingly basic expressions everyday.
       So my apprehension to learn German is justified. After these past few months in Spain, I'm not ready to let go of this new-found feeling of immense satisfaction that I can communicate whatever I want with whomever I want in a foreign language. I'm not ready to go back to describing people as though I talked like a toddler in a 21-year-old's body: "That man is tall. He is also bald." Jeez, bald. I probably didn't even learn that one till at least sophomore year.
      But I will try. Because what feels more satisfactory than knowing two languages? Knowing three. And as my Swiss friend Cecile can tell you, knowing five is even cooler, so maybe I can get there some day. I'll always feel like Spanish is my baby, something I've strived for so long to raise and nurture and see off into the world, and I hope that I don't forget it when I'm trying to pronounce and retain words like wienerschnitzel. (And I'll say one thing, the tests better not count spelling.) But every journey begins with a step, or some crap like that, and if one day I want to own my own automobile company, work in a beer garden, or be CEO of Kinder chocolate (yes please!), I better start with German 1.