The head bob

What is the head bob…it is the unconscious, and sometimes conscious, slight nod of the head while listening to people on the street speak to you.  And I’m perfecting it!  The program I’m in right now (see my previous post) has you memorize a paragraph of text, written by a native speaker, and recorded by the native speaker so I can practice getting the phonetics correct as well, then using that with people on my langugae learning route.  Apparently, the people on my route, after hearing me say my text and then ask them the questions, think that I can actually communicate well….so, off they go!  Enter the deer in the headlights look, then the quick realization that I’m a deer, which begins the head bob.  The first break in breath I try to cut in to say “Más despacio, por favor” (Slower, please).  Which causes them to slow down, ohhh, let’s say…not one bit (LOL).  By now they are sentences and sometimes paragraphs into their thoughts.  Most of the time I can get the general gist of what they they are saying, but not anything specific.  Then when the inflection of their voice changes to alert me that they are asking me a question, enter again deer in headlights…with about 15 seconds of awkward silence, when I ask them to repeat the question.  My mind needs time to go back and replay the words that came flying at me.  Most of the time after clarification and explanation of unfamiliar words or phrases, I can give some sort of satisfactory response to them.  But there is this one guy that can’t understand one iota, even when I try to ask for clarification and to slow down, I still can’t understand him…whew, it’s hard work!  I don’t know if he’s mumbling or if it’s my ears that are mumbling! So back to the head bob, the main point, right now at least, is for them to talk and me to listen.  Which I need a lot of.

So, my language learning route consists of going to a commercial area and speaking to the workers in the stores.  I go to 2 shoe stores, 2 men’s clothing stores, 2 electronics stores, the national theater, an art gallery, a book store, and a cafe.  Today was my first official time out on the route, it was fun, hard, and demanding.  This is gonna be a good trimester.