Some days I adventure without taking a single physical step outdoors. I begin by navigating the choppy waters of conjugations, conjunctions, and clauses. Then I arrive at an unknown frontier, one where I have to hack through the jungle of new vocabulary and construct a sentence that bridges the abyss from my vernacular to this new terrain: Spanish. My thoughts in this land are halting and deliberate. My ideas are simple:

—El tiene muchos libros. He has many books.

—Yo hablo ingles. I speak English.

Progress is difficult, some days impossible, and I am left struggling on the shore, repeating quiero, quería, querré for hours. I keep at it, however, a bit everyday because this landscape of language fascinates me. I have the keys to further my study of words and structures. Someday these keys will allow me to dream in this tongue. They will…