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I took Spanish classes in 8th, 9th, and 10th grades. It was a requirement in my school system to take 3 years of a foreign language and so I did what I could to complete my obligation as soon as possible.

In college, I eschewed Spanish and all other foreign language classes. Instead, I indulged in things I was passionate about and that were more or less easy for me like psychology and creative writing. To be honest, I was afraid of taking foreign languages in college. I was sure that the classes would be extremely difficult and that they would pull my GPA down and ruin my chances of maintaining my scholarships and or getting new ones. In short, I more or less didn't believe that I was smart enough to succeed in foreign languages in college.

Spanish had always come somewhat easily to me in high school so I'm not sure why I was frightened away from it in college. In any case, upon starting my career as a school psychologist, I made a list of personal and career goals, one of which was becoming fluent in Spanish. At the time I wrote this goal, it was like a New Years resolution-a nice idea with little chance of being carried out.

People ask how I ever got the idea to go to Argentina last winter to immerse myself in Spanish. And so I guess it all started with writing that goal and growing increasingly close to age 30. Then came a short trip to Italy with my brother and sister that stoked my interest in travel. This was followed by the realization that I was incredibly bored during the summers of not working in my job and the idea that I should take advantage of them by travelling.

So, I began researching ways to learn Spanish in a Spanish speaking country. Spain immediately came to mind due to its 1st world status and membership in the European Union. It would have been a safe and fun place to visit, albeit expensive due to the dollar's precipitous fall against the Euro. Mexico was an option, but it didn't intrigue me and I was concerned about health and safety standards. I considered cities throughout South America, but the only one about which I received overwhelmingly positive feedback was Buenos Aires. No one I talked to had a bad thing to say about the city and my Argentine friend, Marcelo, was overwhelmingly enthusiastic about my plan to visit for the summer. So, I googled, researched schools, found one, met a host family through my school, and off I went.

I spent the U.S. summer of 2007 taking 4-6 hours of Spanish classes per day in Buenos Aires and the rest is history.... Now I'm back for a year, already more or less fluent in Spanish and, I hope, getting better every day. I think it's fair to say that I reached my goal sooner than I had anticipated, although the measures I took to get there were a bit extreme.

Although I have learned to read basic newspaper and magazine articles in Spanish, I had never found it enjoyable. My ritual last summer was reading Newsweek in Spanish while riding a stationary bike at the gym. I had to basically force myself to do so and always carried a pocket dictionary to look up words whose meaning I couldn't glean through context. It was tedious and most of the articles were trash so I never before was enamored with the idea of reading in Spanish.

During my year of work back in the states, I carried on instant messenger friendships with conversation partners throughout South America and Spain. I spent almost 2 hours of every day chatting in Spanish and without even really realizing it, my ability to read Spanish improved remarkably. Upon returning to Buenos Aires, I continued to avoid reading in Spanish and instead read magazines that my parents had schleped down here for me. Reading The New Yorker or Kiplingers was like candy. Sure, I enjoyed it, but it was unhealthily separating me from the culture and language here.

About 2 weeks ago, I resolved to attempt reading literature here as a means of improving my Spanish. I sensed that my skills were slipping away due to working most of the day in English. I had to find a way to continue to gain Spanish skills. That's partly why I'm down here. So, I decided to start reading books for young adults. A book for a 10-12 year old Argentine kid should be readable, I thought.

One day on my way back from the butcher shop, I walked to what seemed like a cheap used bookstore and sheepishly asked the owner if she could recommend a book for adolescents. She lead me to a small section and pulled out two books. I chose the one with less writing in it and bigger print, figuring that I had to start with something that wouldn't frustrate me, something I might even enjoy.

That same day, I carried my book off to the city's botanical gardens to read in the sun. I brought my dictionary along, but quickly realized that I didn't need it. I found the experience of reading fiction in Spanish exhilerating. I could picture the characters in my head and hear them speaking, just as if it were English. The story was about a wealthy Argentine family who lived in San Isidro (A wealthy northern province near the city). The family of four, parents and two boys lead a reasonably storeybook Argentine life until the older prodigal son contracts HIV. The book is what we would call a problem novel, very common in the U.S. These books became prevalent in the 60s and 70s through novels by authors like S.E. Hinton (The Outsiders), Robert Cormier (The Chocolate Wars), and Paul Zindel (The Pigman). Basically, the main character or characters are brought into conflict with some type of very concrete and serious life event such as death, gang violence, class wars etc. The outcomes of these novels are rarely happy and instead function to provide a dose of reality and to help adolescents prepare to deal with these types of difficult situations that they will no doubt at one point or another encounter. At the end of this particular book, the main character learns to accept his older brother's condition and to improve his relationship with him inspite of it. The main character has to go through a process of seeing past his brother's scary illness to the core of who his brother truly is.

I finished reading my first book in Spanish in a matter of days and was off to a different bookstore for another. Emboldened by my success, I searched through the adult section, looking maybe this time for an adult book translated from English into Spanish, so that at least I would recognize the phrasings and style of language. In the end, I settled on a small book written by a British author about turning 30 years old-perfect for a 29-year-old guy like myself. As I had anticipated, this book proved slightly more challenging, but within 5 days, I had finished it too, without relying much on the dictionary.

On my previous trip to the bookstore, I had spied one of my favorite books of all times-Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. I love survival stories and this is the ultimate. I kind of see myself as Robinson Caruso in AR, starting a life in a new an alien place without family and having to learn more or less how to live all over again. The only problem with this book is that it is extremely long and written in an older English style, which makes its translation into Spanish that much more difficult. However, the translation is by Julio Cortazar, one of the most famous Argentine authors. For me, this sealed the deal. I have learned from my previous interest in Russian litarature that the translation is extremely important. I have read two different translations of The Brothers Karamazov and found them to be two very different experiences. So, when I found out that one of my favorite books had been translated by a literary genius, it was for me like finding a giant Mario Batali made piece of Tiramisu on a half off sale at a bakery 3 blocks away from my house.

So now, I'm starting book number 3, a behemoth Spanish translation of one of the great classics. Reading in Spanish has become my new favorite hobby and I don't feel guilty doing so. After all, not only am I reading, I'm also improving my Spanish.

I must be about to turn 30, though sometimes I feel more like 50. I have no idea when my favorite activity went from climbing sheer rock faces in Oregon to sitting on a bench in a garden on a sunny Sunday and reading books in Spanish....