Hey guys, I'm still on the Camino de Santiago and I wanted to share a quick story with you guys
about something that happened to me here on the Camino.
It's happened yesterday.
And it sort of offers a bit of a different perspective from
The last video I made for you guys a few weeks ago from when I was in France.
This happened to me yesterday and I walked all day
That's just life on the Camino. You're walking walking walking. It's hot you're tired sweating and
Finally I got to the destination that I wanted to walk to
And I get to the alberge. An alberge is kind of like a hostel and I get in there and
It's about 1:00 2:00 in the afternoon, and I talked to the "hospitalero" which is like the
Person that's in charge of the alberge
and he invites me in and
We talked for a little bit and he was only speaking English to me and I can tell that his English is is really broken
But he's trying and I told him right up front
"Hablo, español" and I said if it's easier for you we speak Spanish.
But he kind of ignored that and he just kept speaking
English and it was bad, you know, he would be like "Eh, the most important... eh...
"regla... rule... most important rule is
"eh... no... no...
"Must be silence from...
"10:30 p.m. to... eh... 6."
You know, and it's just kind of painful but he kept trying and
You know, you know we sat there and I have to confess
I got a little annoyed because it just took five times longer than it needed to
It's really annoying because I have to go to the bathroom and I just walked all day long. I'm hot. I'm sweaty. I'm tired
I just want to get to my bed and just take a load off
And then I think he could tell
On my face, so finally after
10 minutes of struggling through his English
He finally goes,
"Perdón. Es que quiero practicar mi Inglés."
Sorry, I
wanted to practice English but
You know and he seemed a little downtrodden and he reverted to Spanish and at that moment I kind of
realized
What was going on. And I said, "oh no, I'm not letting you give up on your dream of learning English."
I didn't say that out loud, but I thought that
and he switched back to to Spanish a little bit and
And I didn't let him after that point when I realized what was going on.
I switched it back to English and I only let him speak English to me.
And I think that really brightened his day. Gave him some time to practic,
and
It kind of gave me a different perspective because
You know
normally
I'm the one here in the channel saying don't be afraid
To practice your languages whether you're annoying whether it's embarrassing whether you screw up make tons of mistakes
You gotta embrace your mistakes. You gotta be bold when you're practicing your language without
apologizing
and
you just have to
Just have to do it. Just open your mouth and speak no matter what the consequences no matter how embarrassing it is.
And it really made it a little bit more real for me today because I was on the other side and
sometimes
You know, it really is an issue. Sometimes people are gonna be annoyed but
If you give in to that, you're not gonna learn if you
If you let that defeat you and just revert to your native language
You're not gonna learn and he pushed through I mean granted he he almost gave up
And if I would have let him give up then that just would have been the end of it
but
It also goes to show that people are
interested in helping you
And a lot of people are really interested in helping you learn their native language because their language is special to them
And if you let them know that you're just really passionate about learning their language and you can change their perspective
Too because it did change mine
I originally was kind of annoyed and just frustrated and trying to hurry and then
For whatever reason I didn't realize that he he needed someone to practice his English with
But when he just told me that it changed my perspective and I became a lot more understanding
And a lot more willing to help him
So that's the story. I don't know there's several
Different points that you could take out of it
I guess make of it what you will but I think it's interesting things to think about
Just another experience here on the Camino and
If you haven't been following my trip
Camino de Santiago is really just an amazing experience
I highly recommend it for anyone especially language learners a lot of lessons to be learned here
So that's just my video for today. I wanted to make it quick and brief and
Yeah, that's it so thanks for watching