A question from my student

Hi all.

One of my students asked a terrific question about my experience here. He asked

"Do you think it makes your "shock" experience worse, and potentially undermines the immersion benefits, to write blogs and also try to teach a class in English while focusing on the Spanish?"

This is what I wrote in response:

"Great question! It is somewhat challenging to go back-and-forth between languages and is usually not recommended for a total immersion experience. Luckily, I have lots of experience going back and forth between English and Spanish as I usually am using both in the field. During our archaeological excavations I speak Spanish primarily throughout the day and evening with our workers and locals, but speak with other gringos in English. While this can be very challenging at different stages, for me I've become somewhat accustom to the switch, though find sometimes I can only think of a particular word in Spanish and totally forget the English word for it!  That is a strange experience given English is my native language!

And I think that blogging is great for culture and language shock, but sometimes total immersion can make culture and language shock more intense but shorter in duration. When constantly re-connecting with home I think we are somewhat more connected to both worlds resulting in a less severe experience of culture and language shock, but a longer duration of it."