It was a hot humid Tuesday morning when my mother and I decided it was time to take a trip to the countryside to see her family. The long drive from our hotel to her home town was an adventure in of itself, and I enjoyed watching landscape slowly transformed from concrete buildings and brightly colored houses to mountainous hills and farmland. The hustle and bustle of everyday life slowly faded and gave way to birds chirping and quiet breeze as we entered the country side.
We were immediately greeted by family as we pulled up into the drive way Naturally, my mom wanted to catch up with everyone and introduce me to relatives with whom I never met and others I have not seen in over a year. We went across the street to visit some distant relatives. As we crossed the street, I thought to myself, this could be a great opportunity to flex my foreign language skills.
However, this turned out to be an embarrassing experience as it turned out that my second cousin was less than thrilled and baffled by my unique accent. I over heard him saying how he couldn’t understand why I did speak my ‘mother’s tongue’ that well, and right in front of me told another relative that I don’t speak the language that well.
My pronunciation of some words may not have been precise, but I have amazing auditory comprehension of the language, so upon leaving I answered back “you’re right I don’t speak the language very well.”
