But when were you UNDER Spanish?

Another tidbit I could've posted in Spain, but didn't...

It’s finally time to go home. Heather and I have been taking turns getting homesick, having dreams and/or nightmares about home, tiring of the daily work of traveling: packing and unpacking bags, never knowing where anything is, bathrooms with light sensors that don’t work. And, for Heather, speaking Spanish. The words were getting harder to recall. She felt her accent was getting worse, not better, by the day. And she was sick of hearing the tones and lisps of the language constantly ringing in her ears.

“I’m over Spanish,” she said. “Is that bad?”

I assured her it wasn’t.

“I don’t speak Spanish, so I don’t care,” I said. “But I speak enough for both of us.”

Which was true, in a sense. As long as our needs don’t extend beyond the answers to these questions:

Do you have cigarettes?
Where is the bathroom?
I’d like coffee/wine/gazpacho/Coca Cola light/a glass of beer/ a ham sandwich.
Where am I?
Where is it?
What time is it?
How are you?

And as long as no one asks me a question that can't be answered with: Pute Madre (or ‘fuck yeah’).