Now, I’ve tried running to all kinds of music.  For instance, I LOVE Opera and other types of Classical, I LOVE Movie Soundtracks and French Café style music and really, just about anything as long as it is able to grab my soul and shake it around a bit – instant goosebumps are typically the best litmus test  …. but I can´t run to just any type of music.  The music in the afore mentioned categories actually tend to work against my efforts at vigorosity. (I know there is no such word, but taking liberties is sometimes necessary …)  That is, they make me feel heavy and slow, as though I’m running in water … in water, in a dream …. from an energy perspective.  Emotionally … these categories have the power to do to me what Delilah did so handily to Samson.  I become as a delicate as a 100 year old figurine at risk of  shattering into a million shards of hopelessness and vulnerability.  No, these categories of music are better suited for those times when I am sitting around with my best friends and a super chilled martini in hand.

Rather … what I need when I run … is ‘Fight Music’.  You know the  type I mean.  That music  that is informed and powered by all the hard knocks you’ve experienced since day one …. and survived, thank you very much … and for which you’ve become the wiser and stronger.  That perfect combination of major and minor note progressions that personify what you believe in, what you’re willing to fight for – that music that brings you to that defining limit that sets apart in no uncertain terms, the ‘you’ in you.  Yeahhhhhh … there is nothing like a good Fight Song to get me running like a cheetah in hunt at 5:30 AM.

… And once I hit my stride, all kinds of things start to happen. Like for instance I get really smart and creative … (can’t be all endorphins, can it?) … and I am able to come up with the definitive list motivations, relatively speaking,  that drive human behavior; I am able to grasp Quantum Physics … well …  more specifically, the idea that wavefunction is actually a mathematical function that can provide information about the probability amplitude of the position and momentum of a particle …  and I am also able to get my head around or perhaps into Spanish in a way that makes it all seem so darn easy.

What’s more … there is great synergy between this blissfully inflated, albeit fleeting, sense of linguistic potential and the best Fight Songs in the world.  Which songs are these exactly?   Why those that come from our Latino neighbors of course.  What is going  on with these guys?  They really know how to get those raw emotions out there for all the world to see … and hey! now that you all have been updated on all my deepest personal stuff  … weigh in, won’t ‘cha!   It’s true!  Their songs are not just personal cathartic releases, they are very public calls to rally one´s country around their cause!  Just check out the crowd response at a concert for one of these guys!  And I must admit, the side of me that I keep hidden from my German side, for appearances sake, does kinda relish this propensity toward reckless emotional abandon.  Nothing like a really, good, loud, purge ….( “Put    the    cup     down    and    back    away    slowly   ….”)  Oh, sorry, that was Luis, I just had one sip past my half-cup caffeine limit.

Anyway,  what I wanted to share with you all today where two things …. First ….  my most recent Fight Song – feel free to use it if you’d like –  it´s got a way with, ahhhhh …hmmmm,  let´s call it ‘resolve’.

And the second … is how I am using this song to expand my ability to express myself in Spanish.   Now granted, the phrases in this particular context can come off rather aggressive, but our work then is to challenge ourselves to find other contexts within which we can apply what we’ve picked up in let’s say, less combative ways.

The rhythm of the language in this song captures me as well.  I’ve heard these two singers in interviews and I have to say that they sing (rhythmically speaking), pretty much the way they speak.  So, I try to –’take in’ their ‘song’ within this song, if you get what I mean, and let go the death grip I keep on my English accent.  Soooo … without further ado ….

….enjoy … or get livid … just be moved!

Hace dos años y un día que vivo sin él,  (For the last two years (and a day), I’ve lived without him.)
Hace dos años y un día que no lo he vuelto a ver, (It’s been two years (and a day) since I saw him last.)
Y aunque no he sido feliz aprendí a vivir sin su amor, (And though I wasn’t happy about it, I learned to live without his love …)
Pero al ir olvidando de pronto una noche volvió…   (And then having forgotten, one night he suddenly returned …)
¿Quién es?  (Who is it?)

Soy yo… (It’s me.)

¿Qué vienes a buscar?  (Who are you looking for?)

A ti… (You.)

Ya es tarde… (It’s a little late.)

¿Por qué?  (Why?)

Porque ahora soy yo la que quiere estar sin ti… (Because now, it’s me who doesn’t want you …)

Por eso vete, olvida mi nombre, mi cara, mi casa, (So …. go, forget my name, my face, my home, …get out of here!)

Y pega la vuelta (…get out of here!)

Jamás te pude comprender… (You never could understand me.)

Vete, olvida mis ojos, mis manos, mis labios, (Go, forget my eyes, my hands, my lips …)
Que no te desean  (…. they don’t want you.)

Estás mintiendo ya lo sé…  (You’re lying, I know you are.)

Vete, olvida que existo, que me conociste,  (Go, forget I exist, that you knew me …)
Y no te sorprendas, olvida de todo que tú para eso  (… and don’t pretend that you don’t get it … forget it all just like you do …)
Tienes experiencia… (… this is what you do. )

En busca de emociones un día marché.  (One day I left in search of romance.)
De un mundo de sensaciones que no encontré, ( … (in search) … of a world of emotional heights that I didn’t find ..)
Y al descubrir que era todo una gran fantasía volví,  (… Upon discovering that it was all a huge fantasy, I’ve come back …)
Porque entendí que quería las cosas que viven en ti…  (… because now I understand that I wanted the things that live in you …)

Adiós… (See ya ..)

Ayúdame…  (Help me …)

No hay nada más que hablar…  (There’s nothing more to talk about …)

Piensa en mí…  (Think about me …)

Adiós…  (Bye …)

¿Por qué?  (Why?)

Porque ahora soy yo la que quiere estar sin ti…  (Because, now it’s me who wants to live without you.)

Por eso vete, olvida mi nombre, mi cara, mi casa, ( …  so, go, forget my name, my face, my home,)
Y pega la vuelta   (Get outta here.)

Jamás te pude comprender…  (You never could understand me.)

Vete, olvida mis ojos, mis manos, mis labios,  (Go, forget my eyes, my hands, my lips ..)
Que no te desean (… They don’t want you.)

Estás mintiendo ya lo sé…  (You are lying, I know you are.)

Vete, olvida que existo, que me conociste,  (Go, forget that I exist, that you knew me …)
Y no te sorprendas, olvida de todo que tú para eso  (… and don’t act clueless, forget it all, for you?…)
Tienes experiencia…  … (it’s a piece of cake….)

“Huh? You are having what?”  Joan tends to be rather literal at times.  ”Fire balls?  What’s a Fire Ball?”

“You know honey, that thing you get that makes you really hot.”

Somehow Joan knew he wasn’t talking about her new underwear;  ”A Hot Flash?  You’re having a sympathy Hot Flash?”

“Yeah, that’s it!  Not a Fire Ball, a Hot Flash.”

Holy cow.

Then he says; “Hey, I was talking with one of my students about the Mary-Go-Round at the park and they were saying that they love going there with their kids.  I didn’t want interrupt their telling me the story because they were really having a break through with their Spanish in that moment, but you know, this has been on my mind for a while.  Who is this “Mary” and why is that thing with horses named after her?”

Joan, still reeling from Luis having “Fire Balls”; “No, not Mary, Merry.”

Luis looking at Joan stupified.

“Merry, M-e-r-r-y not M-a-r-y.  It’s like Merry Christmas, you know, happy, happy.   The carousel of horses is not about some girl named Mary, it’s about being ‘happy, going around’.  (I think.)

“Why didn’t you tell me before? I feel so stupid.  I ‘ve been saying “Mary-Go-Round” since I met you.”

“Don’t worry”, Joan reassures, “No one knew you were saying it wrong.”

“Are you sure?”

Holy cow.

Luis:  ”Hey, I had a student today say to me; “Mi primer vino a visitarme.”  (“My first wine to visit me.”) “Do you know what she way trying to say?”

Joan, still pondering the “Fire Balls”; “Ahhhh, no.  Something about her first glass of wine?”

Luis:  ”No.  Think about it for a moment. What do you think she was trying to say?”

Joan, now experiencing a “Fire Ball” herself; “Geese honey, I don’t get why you are asking me this?  I have no idea what your student was trying to say.”

Luis:  ”Well, when you’ve been a Spanish teacher, teaching native English speakers as long as I have, you learn these things ….. she was trying to say, “Mi prima vino a visitarme.” (“My niece came to visit me.)

Joan:  ”Wow! No kidding. That’s amazing.  How did you know that?”

Luis: “Pene, (penis) peine, (comb) Mary, Merry, Fire Balls, Hot Flashes, over time we learn things.”

Holy cow.             Aquí estamos,  Joan

Luis groans but the right corner of his mouth quivers slightly upward which crinkles the corresponding eye and so though he’s wanting to communicate sternness … my ideas typically mean work for him … the quiver and the crinkle betray the fact that he loves my ideas despite the pain they cause him;  ”Aquí vamos, bueno damelo.¨  (“Here we go …. okay give it to me.”)

“I really think that now that we are into more sophisticated lessons, we should give our students more than just the Spanish language.  What I mean is, let’s spend less time talking about Spanish and spend more time demonstrating it through imparting information about something interesting.“

“Cuentame más.”  (“Tell me more.”)

“Well, how about for instance, we have guest Chefs in and ask them to cook for us?  The whole time they are teaching us how to cook something really yummy, they of course are speaking to us in Spanish so we get the language in it’s full and natural state, in context, and to boot we expand our vocabulary and expressions!”

FAST FORWARD – Joan is in the kitchen with Techy, a local Peruvian caterer who is preparing “Pollo al Vino” (Chicken in Wine).  The plan is for Joan to more or less direct the segment and highlight the ingredients, interesting turns of phrase, new vocabulary … so that our students get Spanish in context and in it’s natural state PLUS a yummy recipe to repeat at home.  (see Joan’s “great idea” above)

But my “great idea” goes south rapidisimo.  Techy is no TV veteran but she takes to the camera in her face like a starving starlet.  She elbows me out of her way and starts barking orders … at me! …  in my kitchen!  I do what she says and get what she wants but when I don’t have something she needs or I don’t get it fast enough, well she wastes no energy in trying to hide her disdain for my less than ‘restaurant professional’ space or manner. I try to interject a little small talk here and ask a student proxy question there, but she either doesn’t hear me or …. more likely, intentionally doesn’t care to share the stage, and since the cameras just keep rolling, I am hesitant to interrupt the flow of things to wrestle back control.  inhale.  (Back? Who am I kidding?  Heck, once she stepped behind the counter, it was over.  The kitchen fell to Cateress Techy and I was relegated  to nothing more than peasant stock.)

And I’ll be honest.  This put me in a really weird place. This is my show after all.  It doesn’t look good to have me performing a public tug-of-war with a guest … who is eating me for lunch with all her fast, fancy Spanish talk.  I began to feel incredibly self-conscious and this got me me focused on “the me” instead of “the task” (remember your High School Speech Class?) and really screwed up my ability to be ‘in the moment’ with Her Highness … and it’s in ‘the genuine moment’ where the most natural and believable and interesting banter originates – namaste.

No, instead it becomes creepingly clear to me that I’ve shape-shifted into the proverbial ‘deer in headlights’ and I find myself a frozen ‘hostcicle’ obsessing about the camera, and then about you guys!,  the students who are watching me lose control of this situation … and most poignantly (read: horrifyingly) after how often I’ve boasted to you all about how easy it is to manage any situation and slow things down in order to clear things up and regain composure so that you can move forward unscathed, blah, blah, blah ….  ha! easy, breezy right? …. and then I start to obsess about how tight my jeans are, that they are slipping off my hips, and that I need to pull them up … but I can’t ’cause the camera is running …. oh god ….. how much longer is she going to cook?

So then what happens is I get what I always get when I start feeling a little insecure … I get a brain freeze!   And the paralysis doesn’t relent until it’s traveled the full length of  my tongue!  Perfect!  My English accent comes out in spades, my ‘enunciator’ gets thick and slow like I have a mouth full of peanut butter.  I get stuck on literally every word and have to push at them two or three times to even get them out beyond my lips.  And then, I can’t believe it,  I use ‘ser’ when I should use ‘estar’ .. which honestly, I never screw up, and then, oh, gosh, well, … the humiliation is thorough.

Now since I’m not one to give up when there’s no face left to save, I scramble for a solid foot hold by looking for Luis so that I can direct my comments to him.  If I can just see him it will help me – he’s my rock, my strong hold, he is always able to calm me down … but alas, he is holding a camera up really high and to my right, it’s lens far from the main camera, the one I should be looking into, (he’s getting the ‘food shots’) … but now I can’t stop myself, the psychosis has taken hold and I continue to speak to it as though to my imaginary friend in the tree.

Holy cow!  I was a total disaster!   But Techy did great and so we will publish this video or this set of videos and you will learn a lot regardless.  Some of it will be how to prepare Pollo al Vino, some of it will be about Spanish and a lot of it will be how NOT to be a Video Segment Host.  Good thing we’re not charging for this program huh?  Sigh…so stay tuned  – it will air on Monday the 12th.

Luis was so sweet …. he said … “Pero mi amor … recuerdas que yo edito todo.”  (But my love, remember I edit everything.)  This brings me mixed comfort though because it means I will be at his beck and call for the next week.      Aquí estamos,  Joan

I was in line, shifting  (hopefully imperceptibly), from foot to foot waiting for the next ‘stall’ to open up … thankfully just one woman in front of me.  A door pops open and I see it before she  does so I gently touch her arm and motion in it’s direction;  ”There you go.”

She turns to me and smiles.  When she reaches the stall, she takes the door from the woman exiting who is holding it for her; “Danke Schoen”, she says, kinda to us both.

“No, por favor,”  replies the other woman who is now headed to the sink.

Holy cow!  I went to an English Pub on Saturday morning to enjoy the World Cup Quarter Finals between Argentina and Germany and found myself in this glorious melting pot of US immigration.  Where is all this rich multiculturalism on a normal day?  It was so stimulating and exciting to see and hear the diversity.  It felt like I had traveled far from the MN I know and I was having the time of my life!

There is a place for Clubs isn’t there?  Clubs!  You know, the place where there are criteria to belong.  Some get admitted and some get excluded precisely for the privilege to hang with people who do or think or are attracted to the same things we are.  It’s fun and comfortable and it’s an opportunity to drill down and really get to focus in on something, get really good or involved in a single area.  To be like I said, among our ‘people’, comfortable.  But there is also something  pretty darn amazing that happens when we set out to broaden our experiences and knowledge cross-culturally.

Ya know?  Think about it this way.  A single voice singing can tear your heart out but regardless of the talent of the soloist, once you layer more voices singing in unison or in harmony or even in dissonant parts, you nuance an entire universe out of a single melody.  You’re carried to galaxies that were not

visible with the naked eye (read: single voice).  Now add to these voices a piano, a string section of varying instruments, the brass section and now some percussion.  Well, there are no words, no collection of words that can adequately describe what has been created.  The whole is so very much more than the sum of it’s parts.  Aquí estamos juntos, si lo sabemos or no …. y es bueno.   – Joan

Yes, I’ve lost my job.  The clinic I was working for has experienced a meaningful reduction in grants;  state, county and foundation funds that were substantial once a upon a time, have broken camp and headed out, taking my salary with them.

“Oh no, does that mean …”, I cut you off saving you from needing to pose the burning but awkward question  …  ”No, no, we are going to keep our commitment to you one way or the other.  The Online Video Program will remain free of charge until the end of 2010.  A promise is a promise”.  Though I must admit I had a dream the other night that Luis and I were walking along the Mississippi River looking for a bridge under which we could get access to free wireless!

The former I share only to give you all a bit of context for what I really want to impart in this Post today.

Challenges are a part of life.  There’s no avoiding them.  They’re like missiles equipped with homing devises programmed with our names on them.  They’ll hit us spot on regardless of what we do or where we go.  Impact guaranteed, our task forward is to pick up the pieces and evaluate their relative worth;  which pieces are salvageable and which have long since (truth be told) served their purpose.

Now this can be a very creative and exciting  moment of convergence if we can get our head on fast enough.  A delicate vortex of new birth and promise.  After all, how many of us have the courage to walk out on something that is still working simply because we want to test our ability to survive the collapse?  And at having gained consciousness, realize that our task has only just begun?  Sounds like a lot of work to me and I’m not sure I would be up to it psychologically as a mere matter of curiosity.

So with visions of convergence and vortex and new birth and promise leading the way, I take my present situation as an opportunity to re-create myself.  My plan is to salvage what I consider of enduring value and to transplant these into a new environment within which they can find fresh and perhaps expanded expression.  (And again, relax, I share this situation with all humility in the potentiality that it can serve as a model for any of you who find yourselves in a similar circumstance or are perhaps are looking for a way to jump start your status quo in fresh and stimulating directions.)

My initial approach to finding renewed balance looks in broad strokes like this.  I take stock of the things I’ve done but would not prefer to continue doing;

1. Providing Mental Health Services

2. Working in a Mental Health Clinic or Managed Care Setting

Next, I identify the skills I’ve gained along the way that I can take to a new level;

1.  The ability to speak Spanish

2. The ability to recognize systemic patterns or larger governing systems

3. The ability to distill these down to their component pieces and illuminate or make them intellectually accessible to others

And finally, with deference my personality traits, that is, I recognize that in order to be happy and thrive I absolutely must be able to;

1. Interact with people

2. Be continually learning something new and be challenged to my limit

3. Be able to be creative

4. Have impact in ever more complex and at ever larger systemic levels

Hmmmm, got a job for me?  Know anyone at Bain & Company or  Boston Consulting Group or Kinsey & Company?

The point today folks is that I am no different from you.  We all get blind sided now and again and find ourselves needing to regroup.  It’s important to start well.  So we take a beat of sufficient counts to steady our hand and quiet our mind.  With this regained composure then we can take inventory of the skills we’ve added and the progress we’ve made along the way which in tandem have prepared us for the next wonderful adventure awaiting us just around the next corner.  The adventure we had no cause to seek out before this moment because, even sadly perhaps, we didn’t need to.

Here’s an exercise in possibilities for you, just for fun ….  take your Spanish.  Couple it with the professional skills you’ve gained until now.  Add your passions in generous measure and give it a good shake.  Now pour it out in a beautifully chilled Bacarrat. (Why not?  We deserve only the best, right?)  Where could you be if you so decided to make a change?   Aquí estamos,    Joan

Well the time has come for a little update …. here is her Blog … straight from Lima …http://karencitadeperu.wordpress.com/ Looks like things are working out rather nicely!  Yeah Karen … we celebrate your adventure with you!  Here´s to Happily Ever After!   ¡Salud!     Joan

But that’s why for instance I ask my clients to bring to conscious awareness what they are saying to themselves and alter this message accordingly if it´s getting in the way of what they want to do … that´s also why I ask my clients to write a daily journal of thoughts and feelings.  What we experience as ‘feelings’ are anchored by ‘thoughts’ that we’ve lost track of, and one of the best ways to alter a feeling is to alter the thought that supports it. Cool huh? Yes, well it’s easier said than done as we all know … but at least it´s a line to shore – and a darn good reminder!

So back to Spanish.  One of the best ways I´ve found to get that coveted ‘custom fit’ in Spanish … is to bring to consciousness all the silly stuff that I think all day long.  And rather than think this pedestrian stuff in English, I make an attempt to think it in Spanish.  I figure it´s stuff I´m going to think anyway, so why not do double duty and use the stuff to practice my Spanish?  Now because I speak the same way that I think, this exercise becomes a way for me to get comfortable using Spanish in a way that represents who I really am and what I really want to say – that is, rather than coming off  like a 6 year old.

Reflect on this one for a second.  What if you were asked to give a nationally televised interview to promote the cause most dear to your heart and all you had at your disposal in English were a 6 year old’s world of vocabulary and concepts?  Frightening. Humiliating. Hair pulling frustration.

So this is a technique I use to find out where the chronological holes lie in my language development.  I can be humming along just fine thinking in Spanish until suddenly I bump up against some vocabulary I don´t have or a concept I´m not sure how to express and try as I may, I am horrified to realize that I sound like a doggone 6 year old, which though cute as they are, doesn’t look quite as cute on me!   So every time I bump into my inner 6 year old, I jot down what I really wanted to say and when I have the opportunity, I ask something who knows how best to express this idea or I resource my dictionary if it’s simply a matter of vocabulary.

I promise you that at the end of an hour (or however long I can maintain this intense and exhausting ‘present moment’ exercise), I’ve placed another couple of bricks in the wall and am far more able to express myself chronologically appropriately.

Of course this method has it’s awkward moments too.  More than once Luis has yelled across the room at me …. “¿Me llamas, me hablas?”  (“Did you call me, are you talking to me?”)

And I have to reply, “No I was just talking to myself.”                     Aquí estamos,   Joan

Yah, now that I think about it … it seeded paranoia in me.  I began to feel as a result of my suspiciousness, defensive and ready to fight or ‘flight’.

Of course I don´t feel that way anymore generally speaking, because I understand what is going on around me.  Not only do I understand the language, but I am familiar enough with the culture that ‘ways of behaving’ in this group, do not ‘put me off’.

What brings this to mind now?  Well, there are a couple of coffee shops in the town where I live, that have become as native country town squares for another immigrant group.  This group gathers in significant numbers and the almost exclusive  male chatter sounds aggressive and argumentative to me.  I find it intimidating.  And as a result of  the volume of this apparent ‘angry music’  I must always yell my order to the barrista. I don’t like to yell.  In fact yelling for me requires a surge of adrenalin that I associate with being angry or out-of-control or in urgent search of someone under perhaps dangerous circumstances.

The intersection then of what my ears are hearing and what my blood is feeling …. well, it’s not a nice place to be.  And it doesn’t help matters any that this ‘they’ smell unfamiliar … due to I suppose their diet which is not like mine … and, oh yah, one more thing,  that they behave toward me in ways unfamiliar to me.  Men in my culture hold the door for me, they don’t nearly elbow me out of the way and rush through in front of me.  If I meet the stares of men  in my culture with a warm smile and a “Hello”, I am greeted (most often) similarly.  Not rather by a continuation of the same mute stony stare.  No, I am not charmed by this group.  Not even curious.

Now, we aren’t suppose to acknowledge these feelings in our progressive, sophisticated, way enlightened and PC country, are we?  Because feelings are informed by conclusions we have drawn based on our cultural biases which are at best one sided and myopic to boot.  There is so much more to each of us than what can be understood from a single point of view.

I wonder.  If I were to take the time to learn their language … would I find myself less ‘put off’?  Maybe.  But maybe I would find myself even more ‘put off’!  It’s hard to say without actually investing the time but it seems a logical assumption that learning their language would at least help me know where exactly we parted ways.   And if I knew that, maybe I could see as well, where we had a meeting of the minds and hearts. And why would that be important?  Well, I would be less vulnerable to the propaganda proliferated by my own paranoia and the political and financial agendas of others.

What was the point of that old tale referred to as The Tower of Bable?  What was the  reason for bestowing so many languages upon the population?  To divide and pit one group against the other … right?  It was punishment or something like that?  Right?  Well, whether one believes this story literally or understands it as Monday Morning Quarterbacking  … the point retains it’s edge;  an inability to understand one another, divides us.

I wonder if there were an expectation (subjunctive alert) that our children become fluent in several languages (otro) as well as learning their math and science (otro) that they would be able to lead us (otro) more effectively in the direction of a more peaceful world.  Of course that wouldn’t take care of  (nope, this one is conditional)  the greed and narcissism and power mongering of the people that exploit our fears and paranoia for the enrichment through same of their personal bank accounts.

What is driving this rather cynical reflection?  Well, I guess the pickle we find ourselves in (read AZ) when we can’t even speak the language of the folks that are flooding through our borders.  Whether we want them for our labor force or they want us for drug and people trafficking or we are just two groups of people with distinct cultures looking for a way to share the good life that just happens to be, in promise at least, on our side of the border for now … I am thinking that the one that has command of the most languages has the power to either keep the peace or raise hell.  Aquí estamos,  Joan

Not to belabor a point that those of you viewing our videos already have heard me say about a half a million times, but as English speakers, we do have a ‘subjunctive perspective’, we just don’t have a special ‘verb conjugation’ that identifies it.  For this reason I suspect we, as native English speakers, find it hard to get and stay in touch with this ‘perspective’ or particular nuance in our communication.  Because we can’t identify this ‘voice’ in our own language … we are left with memorizing what our Spanish teacher or material presents to us.  And this where the muddle gets it’s foothold.  One does not know what one does not know!  Right?  And so a native Spanish speaker is about as likely to be able to explain what the equivalent ’subjunctive perspective’ would be in English as a native English speaker would be able to explain why a native Spanish speaker would need to create a specific conjugation to communicate a particular perspective.

Are you spinning?  Confused?  Feeling the need to read that previous paragraph over again only slower and aloud with pencil in hand as you try to write it in algebraic form?  Welcome to the darkest moments of my marriage.

Disclaimer:  I am not an English teacher, nor a Spanish teacher,  nor a Linguist nor a permutation of any of the aforementioned.  I am a native English speaker married to a native Spanish speaker who just happens to be a Spanish teacher trying to teach me his language.

Perhaps it is this particular collection of dynamics (Native English Speaker, Native Spanish Speaker, Spanish Student, Spanish Teacher, Married to one another) that propels Luis and I to really wrestle with the traditional ways Spanish is taught.  There is more at stake here for the two of us than just getting the right coffee drink delivered to our table.  Can you say, “until death do you part so help you God?”

Oh, that sounds dramatic I know … but you’d get it if a camera were following he and I around day in and day out.  You would find yourself drawing in the air in an attempt to trace when and exactly where it all went so terribly wrong  …. “Okay, she said …. and then he said … and then she asked a clarifying question … and he answered in opposition to what we thought he’d said a moment before … and she takes off like a rocket …. and then he stands there confused …. and says, “Pero mi amor, te amo.”

We intended to get our Monday Video out on Monday this week.  But here is is Tuesday and I suspect it will be in the evening before you’ll see it.  Why is that?  Well, for all the things that went on behind the scenes.  Luis and I don’t do; “Okay, have it your way,” very well.  Oh heck, honestly?  We don’t do it at all!  We hash it out and around and up and down until we find a way to agree.  Honestly agree.

What you will see in Video 84 and 85 is the result of this really confusing and frustrating and difficult discussion between us.

Luis wanted to draw out how “Espero que …..”  and “Quiero que or Necesito que….” are really two different messages that employ the Subjunctive Tense.  He wanted to divide these two sentiments between two days.

I wanted to be sure that our students didn’t get the message that they needed to memorize these three words as “triggers” for the Subjunctive.  No.  I wanted to draw out the ‘guiding principle’ about WHY the Subjunctive tense was employed when we are talking about what we ‘want’ or ‘need’ or ‘wish’ or ‘desire’, the difference between when we’d choose one word over the other is interesting but secondary to the point of the lesson.

I’d be interested in what message comes through these videos … is it clear to you why you would use the Subjunctive Tense when choosing to communicate something using these words?  Or no?  Now, I am not asking if you use them easily yet … that’s a different problem.  I just want to know if you understand WHY Spanish speakers choose the Subjunctive in these instances ……from a English point of view that is!!!!         Here’ s to hoping that I am not sorry I asked the question …….  - Joan

As far as advertising campaigns go, I really think Pepsi is onto something here;  that rare promotional campaign that serves it’s purpose through contributing to a greater good.  Will sales of Pepsi products surge because of their community investment?  I guess time will tell, but nowadays, if given the choice to support a company that is contributing something of value to our country vs. one that is not, the majority of us would jump on board without hesitation.

We have a long way to go to reach the #1 or #2 spot to win the Grant – it could happen.  But regardless, we are already receiving something of infinitely more value.  That is, as a result of this contest we have been given a vehicle through which we are able to identify and gather together a ‘community’ of like minded people … and there is nothing better than hanging out with people who ‘get us’.  When we are with ‘our people’ we feel understood and accepted and validated, as well, we experience a sense of our own value to our community which in turn is the seed from which a sense of responsibility toward our fellow man takes root.  We all need to know that we have something of value to give.

It’s the yin/yang of belonging.  A sense of belonging makes our life more enjoyable, more peaceful and these inner states contribute to our physical and mental and spiritual health which without any prior permission from us, emanates from us and splatters willy-nilly all over random and unsuspecting passer’s-by … it can even get all over those that aren’t even a part of our community …. it’s a good mess all ’round.

As you leave your beautiful, raw and honest messages for us … you encourage us, you validate our work and you insinuate yourself into our lives which seals our commitment to you to do the very best that we can to provide a product and a service that really benefits you.  I know, that sounds gooey … but community is all about a connection that matters, that impacts, that leaves it’s mark and guess what? … it has it’s gooey parts.

So, 7 days in to the contest and Luis and I are already winners … we have been surrounded and embraced by our community.   Seven days in to the contest and you all are winners too …. you are able to see through the comments of others that your passion for the language, your need of the language, your struggles and joys with the language are shared by every other single person in this community. Knowing this eases the way that would be out right brutal otherwise!  Hey! I have an idea!  When this contest thing is all over … we should keep hanging out together.  Studying Spanish is a lot more enjoyable with you guys at my side!   Aquí estamos all gooey,  Joan