Dreams

I finally had a dream en español (at least, finally recalled it). I thought it was interesting that the language has not been part of my numerous and vivid dreams since arriving in South American, given my relative immersion. I often had French in my dreams in high school - thanks to our teacher Madame Caine drilling it to us and enforcing things like French camp for a whole weekend pas d´anglais... so you´d think I´d be having my crazy dreams about border crossings in Spanish.

Not until last night, and what a stupid one it was. I was contemplating to myself in perfect Spanish (so, first cue this was a dream) how to translate the Shakespearean line ¨to be or not to be¨given that there are TWO verbs ¨to be¨in Spanish, estar and soy. In this dream, I posed various permutations (different subjects, tenses, verbs) to my audience in a large concert hall, but I couldn´t see them because of the lights, but went on about ¨estás o no estás¨ ... then I decided that I needed to go to Quito (the capital of Ecuador) and turned on the light, to find that my audience consisted of a few school children in their uniforms, many with tears. Likely from boredom, but who knows. Then one started chasing me, and I called her a robber. Anyway, then I woke up - thanks to the loud noise made my the mischievous bunnies in the next room (the bunnies were NOT part of the dream, they are reality but more about our new pets later).

Anyway, I had to share because I consider dreaming in the language an achievement and indicator of my engagement with español. I will tell my teacher because we are watching a movie this morning and I tend to fall asleep in such situations, and I can assure her if that happens I´ll still be practicing Spanish in my head (and not in my beer).