Moments That Count

"And planning for the apocalypse 
Is not considered
Considered cool
I don't suggest it myself
But no I won't sweat"
 - My Mathematical Mind, by Spoon



I remember the day I successfully said 'five-hundred' in Spanish.

In June of 2013 I moved to Costa Rica to attend six months of language school. It was a total immersion program: I lived with a Tico family (Costa Rican), walked to school each day and had classes in vocabulary, pronunciation, and the ever-complicated grammar. I had one teacher who was so laid back, teaching classes with little to no preparation beforehand, that no one in the class felt as though they were learning much. I had one who refused to speak a word of English to explain what she was teaching in Spanish, lecturing people if they didn't get it (which none of us understood of course, just the general gist from the universally stern tone and eyebrows).

But there were two teachers in particular who truly rooted for their students, explaining and encouraging and clearly meant to teach. One of those was my first vocabulary teacher. I wish I could remember her name. We'll call her Maria (since I'd say 70% of the women in South America have that as a first or middle name). When I first entered her class, I had no conversational Spanish whatsoever. I could name basic colors and items of furniture, and things such as 'hello', 'thank you', and 'goodbye'. So Maria set out to creatively teach our class the basics and beyond. One day, she wrote a slew of numbers on the whiteboard. She pointed to a number, said a student's name, and we were to call out the number in Spanish, like game show contestants hoping to get the correct answer. She came to five-hundred and said my name, looking at me expectantly. I had had trouble recalling this number before, because in Spanish it follows a pattern of cien, dosciento, trescientos, cuatrocientos, and suddenly changing completely to quinientos. The day before, Maria had jingled her set of keys and told us to remember that the first part sounded like 'key'. It was a memory trick some of the other teachers would have refused, because it brought in English. However Maria knew that how we became able to speak the language was less important than simply being able to, especially in her six-week intensive course. As I racked my brain for the correct answer, she sidled towards her desk to get her keys when I shouted, "QUINIENTOS!" Maria was so thrilled that she actually bounded across the round to hug me. I've never had a problem with the number since.

This past weekend, the ministry organization I'm a part of held their Annual Team Conference. We had speakers, worship, ministry updates, and fun things such as a pie social and talent show. I thought about reciting a poem, but since half the audience was Ecuadorian I knew this wouldn't translate. However a month before I had become fascinated with the Fibonacci Sequence and had memorized the first ten numbers fairly effortlessly. I read a novel called "Speak" which featured fictionalized letters from famous inventors, including Alan Turing. Turing spoke of the sequence, and though I had learned about it ages ago in school, it suddenly became alive for me. So I thought, "Numbers are easy to translate. I'll memorize the first twenty, up to ten-thousand, and recite that."

The night of the talent show, I got my friend Carlos to hold up a large sheet of paper on which I'd printed the following image plus the one above:

I put on my glasses, addressing the room as though I was a teacher and they my students. Using a pincho stick pointer I explained how in nature a snail shell, plus the pineapple and many other plants, all grow according to the Fibonacci Sequence. One part, then a second part equal to the first, then a third part equal to the sum of the first two, then a fourth part equal to the sum of the two parts before it, and so on. 1, 1, then 1+1=2, 2+1=3, and on into eternity. I then explained what my 'talent' actually was, and when Carlos had held up a second sheet of paper which listed the twenty numbers, I stepped back so I couldn't see it and began to recite them in Spanish. The final number was: Diez mil novecientos cuarenta y seis (10,946). Mic drop the pincho stick.


It's always curious to look back and see where we've come from. I dreamed of living overseas as a kind of abstract if-God-wills obedience. It's been different than I imagined, not for good or bad but simply because reality is often different from expectations. Learning Spanish was difficult and frightening and liberating. There are more embarrassing moments than I could have planned for, and also more joy and freedom and delight in walking into almost any situation and being able to make it through in a second language, my mind switching back and forth in waking thoughts and in dreams. As I stood and recited those twenty numbers, picturing them in my head in both languages, I thought about how I couldn't have done it without the support of a patient teacher who celebrated the fact that I could say quinientos, without her having to get her keys.