When learning a new language and culture, you are going to embarrass yourself. There is no way to avoid it. During my second week in Buenos Aires, I had a conversation where I spoke at length about my childhood as a “little girl.”I realized my mistake soon enough, and was laughing as hard as anyone else. I think that you have to embrace the discomfort and humiliation. It is the only way to learn. No one ever learned a language without difficulty.

The most comfortable places for me to practice Spanish conversations have been, not surprisingly, while I am out at a restaurant or bar. In smaller buildings it is hard for someone to avoid poor vocabulary. Food, drinks and soccer make great icebreakers.

There is usually somebody willing to have a really bad conversation to help me work in some practice.

Learning a new language is intimidating, but when some stranger is willing to sit through an hour of poorly put together phrases and grammatical errors, it helps build confidence.

Many people around the world study English and some of them like to show off a bit, most notably the ones that shouldn’t. It adds to the difficulty of learning a new language when natives insist on speaking in English.

I’ve become pretty comfortable with Spanish and recently got my first haircut since I arrived. The woman who cut my hair insisted on speaking English, but my secondary language skills were better than hers, so it turned into a free English lesson. I lost her when she used a Castilian phrase meaning the equivalent of “we are the same but we are different.”

Something was lost in translation here, but she couldn’t believe that I didn’t apprehend the meaning of the phrase. I decided that the best way out was to destroy her thought process in the same manner.

“I understand, but I don’t understand,” I said with my best porteño accent.

Last week, I met some of the relatives of my home-stay family.

In Argentina, it is customary to kiss the right cheek upon meeting someone. First up was an elderly woman and, after the embrace with what I assumed was a grandmother, she says, “I am the uncle.”

Thus, the cycle repeats itself. Whenever you are telling a story and everyone laughs even though you weren’t telling a joke, or when an elderly lady kisses you and tells you she is a man, just remember that we all had to start somewhere.

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