I remember at 22

I remember at 22 worrying if I remembered enough English to do a phone interview for student teaching. I wanted to do my student teaching in Colonia Juárez because it was three (four) hours from home (except by then my parents had moved to Kentucky). I had to submit the essays and applications before I came home from my mission. That was the only email I sent my entire mission. Then they wanted to do an interview with me, and it needed to happen before I came home from Brasil.

We found a family that had a telephone (not everyone did) that I could use and set up the interview for the morning of one of our preparation days. That morning before the phone call my companion sang Primary songs in English with me all morning because it had been pretty much a year since I had had any real conversations in English and I was nervous.

I remember pacing the home we were at while I was on the phone. The family was out running errands so as not to disturb me. The interviewer said I had a very cute accent and they could tell I’d really been learning the language on my mission. They must have liked more than my accent because five months after returning to the United States I was teaching in Mexico. Talk about messing with me linguistically.

I was actually pretty proud of the accent I developed on my mission. There are those (hi Dad!) that say that Portuguese sounds like drunk Spanish. It’s all in how you slur your words. Another family in that same area liked to have the missionaries sing the hymn “The Lord is my Light” in Portuguese because it was one where an American accent would really come out. I was a little proud that they were disappointed I didn’t have an accent for them to make fun of when I sang it. I haven’t liked that song since though.