The Fearless Fluency Club: Conversation

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Vanessa: Hi, welcome to this month's conversation lesson in the Fearless Fluency Club.
Today you're going to meet Ailsa. Ailsa is a really interesting person who has
traveled abroad, studied abroad and done cultural exchanges as a high school
student. In the US, it's really unusual for a high school student to live abroad or
travel abroad. Usually we don't do this until college, university time and a lot of
people don't do it at all. It's even unusual if you do it at that time in your life.

So Ailsa did it much earlier. She knew at a young age that she wanted to live in
other countries and she's also a great person who just takes action. She talks
about a lot of things in this conversation that for me were kind of surprising. That
she didn't have a skill about something, but she didn't care. She just tried it
anyway. So I want you to take her words and also take a piece of her confidence
that okay, maybe she didn't know about something, but she gave it a try. I hope
that you can do that too. If you don't know something, you can just give it a try.
Enjoy this lesson with Ailsa and let's meet her.

Hi everyone. I'm here with Ailsa.

Ailsa: Hello.

Vanessa: And we're going to be talking about a lot of stuff, about cultural exchanges and
whatever your experiences with that and whatever comes up along the way.

Ailsa: Yeah. Awesome. I'm really excited.

Vanessa: Yeah. So what is your cultural or like linguistic background? That's a big question
to start with.

Ailsa: Yeah. So I've always been really interested in language. When I was in high
school, we had the option of taking Spanish or French. Those were like our two
choices. So well also, we had like in kindergarten, you could do a little bit of
Spanish. We sung this one song we sang that was like Senor Don Gato is a Cat.
So-

Vanessa: I think I remember that.

Ailsa: Do you remember that one? El Senor Don Gato was a cat.

Vanessa: He fell up that roof and broke his back.

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Ailsa: Yes, exactly. So this is a very like American-Spanish thing that we do.

Vanessa: And just not really even in Spanish, but-

Ailsa: No. It's like one word. Gato, so. So yeah, so we had that in kindergarten. But you
know, throughout elementary and middle school you don't really have much
language. I'm not sure if that was your experience.

Vanessa: Yeah, like 10th grade was about the starting point for me.

Ailsa: Okay.

Vanessa: Which is pretty late.

Ailsa: Yeah, exactly. So I started in ninth grade in French class and I just remember
thinking like I don't want to do Spanish. That's what my sister did. That's what
everybody does. I want to do French. It's like more upper class and cool and chic
and I'll go to Paris. And then, I took ... Let's see, I took three years of French and
then my junior year of high school I took Spanish. And I decided when I was a
sophomore I was like you know, I feel like I've understood the whole high school
thing. I've done it, I'm ready for something else. I want to be an exchange
student.

Vanessa: Even in high school?

Ailsa: In high school, in 10th grade, I was like I want to be an exchange student. So I
started doing all this research on the internet and I was like I want to go to
France, I speak French, this is it. This is for me. And I met people that were kind
of like on pen pal websites. You could like chat with people from all around the
world to practice your French or German or whatever language. And I met so
many French people that are like "Oh yes, you have to come to France. It's
beautiful. You'll love it." So I looked through a bunch of different programs. They
were like AFS ... I can't remember the names, but I did Rotary Youth Exchange.
And so I was like, I want to go to France. Like this has been my dream. I'm just
super excited. And they were like okay, great. Like you come to some Rotary Club
meetings and we'll tell you more about the program, get to know about it.

So I did all that. And you list your top 10 choices. So Rotary's different in every
state. It's just, you know, Rotary Club. So I listed my top 10 choices. Obviously I
was like France, France, France, and then I put Spain and Belgium and all these
other European countries. And they contacted me and they were like "Okay,
great. We have like a place for you in France. It's going to be great. We're super
excited." So I was like think about 16 at the time and it was just my dream. I was
like oh, I'm going to Paris. I can finally use my French. I was so excited.

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And then like shortly before us was to leave, they said "Actually we don't have a
place for you in France, but you can either go to Germany or South Korea." And I
was like…

Vanessa: How different from France!

Ailsa: How different. Exactly. Not at all the same. But I was like well, I don't know
anything about Korean culture. I was only 16, so now I probably would have
chosen Korea, but it was so different at the time. I just was overwhelmed. I was
like well, France, Germany, they're close. You know, I could take a train and visit.
And I didn't know much about the German language, but I was like well, I know
that Germany is safe. It's probably more familiar so I'll do that. So I still had a long
time to go. They make you do it like a year or two in advance so you can prepare
and like there's a lot of papers to fill out and interviews to do and-

Vanessa: So you have to know early on that you want to do that.

Ailsa: Yeah. Yeah. And you can do it anywhere from like a ninth grader to a 12th grader.
So I was already in like the end of my 10th grade year. And so I actually ended up
doing it my 12th grade year. It took like a whole year to plan it and do all this
stuff. So I immediately signed up for German classes and I remember that I
learned how to say things like help and like-

Vanessa: Basics.

Ailsa: Emergency and my mom was like "You need to learn emergency and like-

Vanessa: Oh, I bet your mom was like "My daughter's going away."

Ailsa: Yeah. I mean she definitely was, but she could tell that I was just ready. I was like
mature and I was bored and I was like I need to go do something. So I took
German classes, I learned very rudimentary German and then my mom dropped
me off in Greenville-Spartanburg airport with this flight from Greenville to
Atlanta to Cologne. And so I lived in Germany for a year. I went to a German high
school.

Vanessa: That was a whole year.

Ailsa: It was a whole year and I was in 12th grade. So in Germany there are 13 grades in
high school. And so your last year you do something called “abitur”, which is like
basically your EOG in high school, like your end of grade exam. But it's basically
like did you pass high school? So all the kids were like studying for that and super
serious. And I went there, actually I went to summer school before I left and
passed math, passed English and then they just said "You can pass one

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class in Germany, get them to translate the document back in English and we'll
accept it and you'll graduate on time."

So I went to summer school. I sat in like remedial math and English and like
trigonometry. And I passed art history with a D and that was that. My other
classes, it was just too hard. So I passed them...

Vanessa: They're all in German?

Ailsa: They're all in German. Even PE...

Vanessa: Whoah, you were just thrown in after...

Ailsa: I was just thrown in. I wasn't put in like special classes, like ESL type thing. GSL. I
was just like with the Germans and it was a really amazing experience.

Vanessa: Yeah, as a 12th grader too. You're not like a five-year-old who a year in school,
you'd be picking it up a lot, but as a senior. That's amazing. So the classes were all
in German. Did you live with a family or what was the living situation?

Ailsa: Yeah, so you live with a family. Like Rotary, what they do in most other countries,
you have to have a child that's in a foreign country and you have to accept a
child. Like an actual change. But what happened was in the US, there were so
few students that wanted to do it or actually followed through with it because I
guess cultural exchange or maybe at the time wasn't like a huge priority.
Especially for high schoolers. It's scary. It's just, you know-

Vanessa: I’ve never heard of… I know one person that did that and that's it. And now you.

Ailsa: Right. It's not like a common thing that everyone does. Whereas I feel like a lot of
other countries, it ends up being ... You know, a lot of people go and learn the
language that they've been studying and they like perfect it in the country or
they have family somewhere. It's more of, you know, commonplace. But here it's
like, whoa. You know, what were you thinking?

So I lived with a German family and actually lived with two. The first family I lived
with for about four months and then the second family I lived with for like eight
months and they were like my second family. You know, they were amazing. They
were so cool. The first family, it was a little bit more difficult. But the second
family, they had like five kids. The youngest was 18, so they were like "We've
been through this. Come and go as you please." And they were just super sweet,
amazing people. And I still like write letters to my host mom to this day.

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Vanessa: That's an intense experience where you're young and you're in a new city and
they're your only connection. Like this a family that's just been plopped into your
life.

Ailsa: Exactly. And it's such a bizarre thing. You know, you go there with a lot of anxiety
because you really just don't know what is going to happen to you. You don't
know the language. You don't have a single friends. And actually, it took me a
long time to make real friends, but they have this saying that the Germans are
kind of like a nut, like a really hard nut to crack, but once you crack it's like you
have them for life. Like they're great friends, but they're-

Vanessa: People break through that shell?

Ailsa: You have to break through that shell and like a lot of times people go to Latin
America and they're like "Oh, people are so friendly and they come up to me and
they want to be my friends." In Germany, people will not talk to you and so you
feel a little bit isolated at first and you feel like oh my gosh, like people don't like
me. But then you become friends and they like really accept you, so.

Vanessa: You have to probably take enough time, too.

Ailsa: Absolutely.

Vanessa: A year is enough time at least.

Ailsa: Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Vanessa: Without the language, that seems like a really difficult barrier. Like did the family
speak any English with you at the beginning? Did they know any?

Ailsa: Yeah. My first family, they spoke English, but they really tried hard not to speak it
with me because they wanted me to learn. So I had two host sisters that were
really sweet. One was about 14 and one was about 11. And so the 11 year old
was just kind of learning English. She was still like pretty new. So she would say a
word in German and I would be like "What is that? I don't know what that is."
And so she would describe it in other German words, which was really helpful
because instead of just doing a direct translation, she was like “shoe?” And I was
like "What's shoe?" And she like "The thing you put on your foot." And I was like
"Oh, shoe. Got it." Put it together.

Vanessa: I know shoe. I know feet. Okay.

And it wasn't just like she was doing the work for me. I was kind of like... You
know, you walk around describing like "The thing I put on my hand" and people
are like what is this person talking about? And then finally you kind of like get

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vocabulary and you get moving and you just have to be okay with making a fool
out of yourself a little bit. And the best thing about being in a foreign country I
think is just you are foreign, so you're allowed to be a little bit confused and a
little bit odd and a little bit weird and you're like, I'm foreign.

Vanessa: It's fine.

Ailsa: That did make sense.

Vanessa: Did people ever expect you or like look at you and say "Oh, she's probably a
German."

Ailsa: Absolutely.

Vanessa: Like expect you to know what you're doing.

Ailsa: Yeah. All the time. Like I feel like when I would get on public transportation,
especially the bus drivers, they were not having it. You know, it'd be like one euro
and I'd hand them like a 10 and just be like "I don't know how many that is or like
what this is." And they would just be like *sigh* and they'd like “dankeschön”
and be kind of like, go on the bus. And I'm like well surely they don't know. If I
had a sign that was like "I'm foreign. Help" or something, maybe they'd be kind
of like "All right, you need a little special attention."

Vanessa: Yeah. Because I feel like when we were living... We lived in Korea for three years.
It was very obvious that we weren't Korean. So we are often given that pass of
like okay, they don't know what they're doing. It's obvious that they're not
Korean, but in a country where you look like you could be from there, that's a
totally different situation.

Ailsa: Absolutely.

Vanessa: They expect you to fit in sometimes… In situations.

Ailsa: For sure.

Ailsa: And some people would listen to my accent. Like I have a decent accent when I
speak foreign languages and so people always mistake me for something
different than American and people would always say "Like I know something
isn't right, but I'm not sure in what way." They'd be like "Are you Brazilian? Are
you Dutch? Like-

Vanessa: Oh, interesting.

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Ailsa: I got Dutch a lot because I think I just tried to sound German, but it didn't sound
German, but it was kind of close. So they were like "Are you from the
Netherlands?" I was like "No, I'm American." They were like "Oh. Okay, all right."

Vanessa: “I’ve never met an American like you before.”

Ailsa: Yeah, exactly. I'm like "Yeah, thanks." I think that's a compliment. So-

Vanessa: Yeah. I mean, I think typically Americans have a reputation for not speaking
foreign languages. I mean, a lot of countries have that. I know of some British
friends have said the same thing that known for not speaking other languages.
But when someone meet someone like you who speaks other languages, it's
helpful to kind of chip away at that stereotype. Like oh, there's more to the
country than just the stereotype.

Ailsa: Absolutely. Or like we have a knowledge of geography. Like I took a geography

class and I remember that my teacher would kind of specifically call on me I think
to try to like embarrass me sometimes. And I knew the answer. It's like I don't it
in German, but I know that place and I would say it in English and then they'd be
like oh, okay. Well, maybe all Americans aren't dumb and don't just have no idea
where the capital of their own country is. And so-

Vanessa: If you had to do all that paperwork for like one and a half, two years to get there,
you got to know a little bit about what's going on in the world.

Ailsa: Yeah. You got to be a little bit with it. So.

Vanessa: Yeah. Yeah, so I'm curious, after that year in Germany, did you have any other
chances to do anything with German since then because I feel like in the US
you'd probably really have to search for some kind of opportunity. Like there's
probably people out there to speak with, but have you been able to do anything
with German?

Ailsa: Yeah, actually I have. So since I spent my senior year of high school, I was
applying for college while I was in Germany. So that was a whole ‘nother
interesting experience. I went to UNC Chapel Hill and so I started two weeks after
I got back from Germany in college. I had kind of like reverse culture shock, but I
decided I wanted to major in Spanish and German. So I had met amazing friends
all from Latin America while I was in Germany because if you think about who's
in Europe, it's like North Americans, South Americans and Asians mostly. A
couple of people from Africa, a couple other Europeans. But I just fell in love with
their culture, their language-

Vanessa: While you're in Germany.

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Ailsa: While I was in Germany. So it was kind of like an Inception moment. Like I was
falling in love with Latin America in Germany, speaking different languages. I took
French, Spanish, English and German in school in Germany and my brain was like
I couldn't. I was just like what are we doing here? Like what language is this?

Vanessa: That's everything together.

Ailsa: It was just like a giant blob. But yeah, so I decided at UNC I was like I want to do
Spanish and I want to do German. I knew barely any Spanish. I knew like hello,
goodbye, friends. I had taken one semester in high school so I could do like count
to 10 all that stuff. And so when I started at UNC, I was like I'm a double major
Spanish and German major, which I think is a little bit, what's the word?
Confident to major in a language that you don't speak yet. I just was so
interested in it then I was like I'm doing it. So I actually...

Vanessa: All in or nothing.

Ailsa: All in or nothing. So I took a lot of German Lit classes. Actually was able to skip a
lot of the German like 101, 102 and I skipped into like the highest level of
German. And so it was really great. I was like finally, my studying on Friday nights
while I don't have friends yet has paid off. So I was able to place into a pretty high
level of German and take like film classes and take a lot of like literature and-

Vanessa: Well, like the fun stuff.

Ailsa: The fun stuff, the cultural stuff. And so the great thing about UNC was that it was
such a large school, they had a lot of varying classes and courses. So I took a
bunch of that and I was in an anthropology major, so I did global studies. So it
was like... It's kind of difficult to explain. It's like anthropological studies. You do
geography, you do language, you do basically cultural studies, international
relations.

Vanessa: Anything about humans.

Ailsa: Exactly. Humans, what we do, that's what I studied. So there I was able to really
use the German and I met a lot of other students who were also exchange
students in Germany. There were like five of us in one of my German classes and
we were like "Yeah, I was an exchange student" and they were like "Me too. Me
Too. Me Too." I was like wow. Small world.

Vanessa: They all gravitated to those kind of classes-

Ailsa: Exactly. Like maybe we're all freshmen placed into like a senior level course and it
just kind of ended up that way. But I'm also an interpreter with Buncombe
County Schools with Spanish.

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Vanessa: Yeah. I want to hear all about that because that's amazing from point zero to
interpreter in Spanish.

Ailsa: Yeah. And the crazy thing is, I'm telling you, Vanessa, the first day that I was an
interpreter for Buncombe County Schools in Spanish, I was sitting in the lobby of
a school, a German family sat down beside me and started speaking German,
talking about like what they're doing and they're like on time for this and they
have a tennis tournament and all this stuff. And I was just listening. I wasn't going
to say "Hey, I also speak German." But there was a point where the little boy was
like "I want to sit down, but this lady is sitting beside you and there's no room."
And I was like "You can sit here if you want" in German. And they just stopped.
They were like oh my goodness. And so the mom was like "You got to be careful.
You'd never know who speaks German."

And it was such a random moment. And the lady was like "Do you babysit? Like
we're looking for a German babysitter and we want someone to speak German
with our kids." And they were older, but it just crazy. Like the mom grew up in
Brazil, but spoke German and it was just like a whole ... Like I felt like this cultural
thing, it's everywhere. Even in a small town, like in western North Carolina, you
meet people who speak German and speak Spanish and it always serves me,
even though it seems like German is not something I use day to day. It's like you'll
meet a German person. They're like "Whoa. Like what are the chances that you
are fluent in German?"

Vanessa: And they're connecting too to something like when you speak someone's native
language, it just touches you somewhere inside. It's hard to pinpoint. Like that
family that you met and you talked with them. Oh, she speaks German, but also
there's some kind of comfort in that, that other people are interested in German
or can speak German.

Ailsa: Yeah, totally.

Vanessa: It's special.

Ailsa: It's just nice. It's like it's comforting. It's like a thank you, showing your effort that
you care enough about their culture to learn.

Vanessa: Yeah, because it's a big effort to learn another language. So I want to know about
your Spanish journey because we know now that you speak well enough to be an
interpreter. But what happened in college that you went from “hola” to now.

Ailsa: Right, right. Well, you know, I'm not really sure where I can like pinpoint there it's
fluency. So I did a TEFL course like to teach English as a foreign language in
Mexico. And what they were teaching us, they were like fluency doesn't
necessarily mean that you'd never make a mistake, but it means that you can

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with no problem, explain all the ideas you want, say everything you want and like
you may make a mistake here or there, but you can still be fluent and not be
perfect. So that for me was something recently that I've learned and I was like
hey, I didn't know that. I thought fluency was the same as being perfect and
never making errors-

Vanessa: That you're a native speaker.

Ailsa: That you're a native speaker, 100%. But really I think it's more about can you get
across all the ideas you want in a concise way, in a correct way? And if so, if you
make a mistake here and there, it doesn't necessarily mean like you'll never be
fluent, it's just... So anyway. So with that in mind, I think it just comes down to
how passionate I was about it. I was so interested in Latin America and I had
never been. I had never been to a Spanish speaking country and I majored in
Spanish.

Vanessa: That's very bold, but also shows your motivation.

Ailsa: Yeah, it is strange and I never really thought about it until now. I'm like looking
back and I'm like wow, I must have really felt passionate about that, that I would
declare my major about something that I know nothing and that I've never been
to that part of the world and-

Vanessa: Is this a lot about your friends too? That they were cool enough that really made
you that motivated?

Ailsa: Absolutely. They totally convinced me that their countries, they were like, you
know, we're relaxed and we have fun. And I just saw that firsthand. I was like
wow, I've been stressed out about German. Here I could just be having fun in
Mexico-

Vanessa: It seems quite different.

Ailsa: It's quite different. Yeah, totally.

Vanessa: German and Latin America.

Ailsa: Absolutely.

Vanessa: What country where those people from that you met in Germany?

Ailsa: So my best friend, her name's Marianna, she's from Argentina. And then my
other best friend, her name is Anna Sophia and she's from Mexico. So I just met
them. And the thing about being with all the exchange students is that our kind
of Lingua Franca was English because everyone had English before, whereas

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nobody had really had German. So I feel like I had a little bit of the upper hand
when it came to making friends because I really already spoke the language that
everyone else was-

Vanessa: Communicating in?

Ailsa: Yeah, I could pick and choose. No, I mean we were all friends, but I could really
connect with people at a much easier level where some of the folks from
Thailand or even some of the people in Mexico, they hadn't had a lot of English
and they knew a little, but I mean nobody had had German. It wasn't like anyone
came there already bilingual. We were all struggling together.

Vanessa: That's the reason why you were there to learn more German.

Ailsa: Absolutely. And so my friend from Argentina, we just connected, like we were
super similar. We had the best time together, but they have a different school
year. They run like their summer months are January and February. So they start
school in like March and run through December.

Vanessa: The opposite.

Ailsa: Right. So she had come there six months late and stayed six months later when I
left. So we had six months together and she was still there and I came home. So
when she returned to Argentina, I went there and I visited her because we were
like "We have to see each other. We're like best friends."

Vanessa: It's a great chance to visit a cool place with a nice person-

Ailsa: With a nice person who will like take you around and show you-

Vanessa: That's the best way to go traveling.

Ailsa: Absolutely. I completely agree. And so I went to Argentina and I saw her
hometown and I've visited Buenos Aires, the capital, and we just had an amazing
time.

Vanessa: That is so cool. It's just amazing the friendships that you make when you're
abroad. Something about that just brings you together so quickly because you're
kind of both struggling in these same situations and you feel so connected. I
know friends I've made when I lived in France or England were just... It's unlike
friendships that you make somewhere that you live like this.

Ailsa: Absolutely.

Vanessa: These friendships here also good, but it's a different type of friendship.

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Ailsa: Yeah, it's like a friendship made out of need almost. It's like we like each other,
but we need each other. Like we're foreign place together. We don't have anyone
else. We don't know how things work here. We don't know the cultural norms.
It's like I need you, but it's just motivation to get to know each other as well
because it's like I'm here in this new place and I want to do it with people and I
want to have fun and you want that too, so let's tackle it together…

Vanessa: Everyone's looking for friends.

Ailsa: Exactly, and it's never like, you know when you're traveling, you don't meet
people generally who are like oh, I don't want to talk to you. They're like "Were
are you from? What do you do? Where are you going? Wanna come?" You
know? It's like very much an open collaborative space and that's what's really
great about traveling, about cultural exchange. People who are open to it are just
the best people because you learn and you meet someone doing something
random and they end up staying in a hostel with you. I'm not kidding you. I
studied abroad in Chile, in college. I met a girl in the airport in Atlanta from
Mexico. We ended up being roommates because she said "I'm going into a
hostel. Where are you going to live?" I had no plans. I said "I'm going to that
hostel too." We were going to the same hostel, two random people in an airport.
And I said "Well, I don't have a place to live. I'm just going to stay in the hostel for
a couple of days like and just look for an apartment."

And she was like "Well, I'm going to live in an apartment behind the hostel and
there's a spare bedroom. Do you want to live there?" And I was like "Sure." So I
mean sometimes it's like these crazy coincidences happen and she's still
someone that I'm a great friend of. Like I visited her when I went to Mexico and I
like translate documents to English for a bunch of her like social justice programs.
It's like you just cross these borders and your friendship just lives kind of through
the trans-nationally.

Vanessa: Yeah, and just being open to that too, because maybe someone who's traveling,
maybe not everybody would be like you and say "Sure, I'll just live in this person's
house." A lot of people who travel are like that. My sister studied... What did she
study? She worked in Argentina for a year and I remember she called me one
time and said "Vanessa, I don't really know where I'm staying tonight but you
know it's going to be fine", and she was totally chill about it. I would not have
been like that because she was just walking around and she ended up staying
with this family. I don't know how she found them, but this family who always
wanted a daughter and they had like three sons or something who are out of the
house and they had this little cabin in their backyard that was amazing and they
cooked her all the meals. They had a swimming pool. They had like Christmas
with her. It was amazing. She found them that day as she was wandering around
that city. Like if you're just open to that kind of stuff, it can happen.

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Ailsa: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Vanessa: That's really cool. And since you were talking about friendships and how special
they are, I just want to share this one girl when I was in France, the first friend
that I made because I spent a year there after I graduated as a nanny for a family.
It was such a beautiful time in my life, but the first week that I was there I
couldn't understand anything and I was only with the French family and they'd
taken me to the south of France to visit their grandparents. And that was really
nice that they took me as just the nanny to do that with them and I didn't
understand anything. Everyone's having a good time and all these big meals and
just like so much happiness was happening and I was just kind of observing. I felt
it was fine, but after two weeks, I felt pretty lonely and just like I need to talk to
someone. I didn't have any internet at the time. It just kind of felt isolated.

And then when I got back to Paris, I met this girl at the school that I was signing
up for and we had chatted for a little bit and we were speaking French together
but I didn't really know any French so I didn't understand hardly anything she
said. But we decided to meet up and then one day, the day that we met up, she
gave me a hug and I almost started crying because I hadn't been like touched by
someone in two weeks because like French people just kiss on the cheek. And
something about like that hug, I felt like I didn't realize how much I needed this.
Someone is giving me a hug, I hardly know you.

And then, it was a weird thing but she pulled an apple out of her purse and I
always carry an apple around with me. But she pulled an apple out of her person
and I was like "No way, you too? What?" It was amazing. Anyway, she was from
Germany and that was just those little friendships where you realize, especially
when you're away from home, I really need a friend and you find each other
through need and it's so special. Yeah, those like connections are really valuable.

Ailsa: Absolutely. It feels like nothing else. It's just like we're both kind of in this
alternate reality. Like neither of us live here. We're both kind of being vulnerable
and being in this transitional space and we meet each other. And you know,
when someone's willing to do that with you, you're right. It's rewarding and you
don't realize like oh, I needed a hug or I needed just someone to talk to me and
like take time to not make fun of me. Or like you feel so nervous about your
language skills or-

Vanessa: Be on the same par with somebody else. That's so important. So I was just going
to ask you about your job now. So can you explain a little bit about your job now
and how you got that and like what's it like on a daily basis or whenever it
happens?

Ailsa: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a Spanish interpreter with Buncombe County Schools and
I've been doing it since the school year started. So I was hired in July and I started

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[25:44]

in August. So I've been doing it just two or three months. And it is on a part time
basis. But basically what we do is we go into schools all over Buncombe County,
so I'll drive as far as North Buncombe, which is in Weaverville, as far south as
almost to Fletcher. Black Mountain to Leicester. So it encompasses a large
territory, so probably like 30 minutes in each direction. So it's a lot of driving, but
we visit a lot of schools. We visit some urban schools, we visit some more rural
schools. And basically what we do in our department, which is language services,
is we go to a school and we do like parent-teacher conferences. We do IEP
meetings, which are like special education, individualized education plans. We do
all sorts of stuff.

So sometimes there'll be an open house and there will be parents there that
don't speak English very well. So we'll just accompany a family and we'll go to the
teacher's room with them and we'll kind of like tell them what's going on.
Sometimes we have mostly Spanish speaking families, but we also have
Vietnamese, Romanian, Russian, Ukrainian and-

Vanessa: So they're translators for those people as well?

Ailsa: Yes. Yeah.

Vanessa: That's amazing. Here in Asheville?

Ailsa: In Asheville, yes. We have a very large Russian speaking population in West
Asheville and in Arden which is, you know, you'd never know that.

Vanessa: Yeah. So there's people who are interested in helping interpret for these families
in the school system. That seems like, yes, it's a job, but it's also like you're giving
yourself, and I don't know, it puts you on the line too. If the teacher is saying
something and immediately you have to translate it to the parents. That's a
tough skill. That's not just speaking Spanish.

Ailsa: No, it's more than speaking. You have to be able to speak and listen at the same
time. So there are two types of interpreting. One is simultaneous and one is
consecutive. So consecutive is like you say something, I think about it, I'd say it to
the other person. They say something, I think about it, I say it back to you. So
that's consecutive. Simultaneous is where you're listening to someone, let's say
give a speech, do an announcement or something. So you're listening-

Vanessa: They're not stopping for you.

Ailsa: They're not stopping for you and you're just thinking about it while you're
listening and you're speaking at the same time to other people. So it's almost like
this strange skill of can you talk and listen at the same time-

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[27:49]

Vanessa: In different languages.

Ailsa: In different language and you have to stay about a sentence ahead of yourself or
a word ahead of yourself to kind of like not miss a beat. So it's really challenging.
And there are situations where it will be sensitive material, something that's
difficult to talk about or someone feels very emotional about it and you have to
transmit that emotion. If someone says "I'm so angry", and you say "I'm so
angry", you're not doing your job. You have to say "I'm so angry." You have to
mimic the emotion or else you’re not...

Vanessa: It's almost like acting.

Ailsa: It's almost like acting. And it's very nuanced because in the moment you have to
make sure that you have all that vocabulary and that it's accessible. So if
someone says a word and you can't remember it, you have to kind of dig deep to
find it and use the correct word because in any language, you've got a word that
someone says and there are 10 other words that are like it, but not exactly. So
you really want to stay as close to the message as you can. So it's a fun challenge
and it makes all the nerdy studying I like to do job applicable. So.

Vanessa: Yeah, all of a sudden all of that vocabulary and all those synonyms are just
coming into play. You have to use them correctly. So how did you decide oh, I
think I want to try interpretation instead of just like oh, I'm just going to speak
with my friends or, like, because studying interpretation or doing that is like you
said a step beyond speaking a language. How did you decide that that was what
you wanted to try?

Ailsa: Well, Vanessa, at first I was actually really nervous. I didn't think I was good
enough to do it. And it's a little bit of that imposter syndrome where you don't
think you're smart enough, you don't think you're good enough, you think
someone else would be better at it. And I had worked in Texas for two years on
the Mexico-Texas border, so I spoke a lot of Spanish in social service positions. So
I worked with a lot of families. I learned a lot of vocab. I did it comfortably in a
job position and I moved back to this area and that same demand just isn't here
for jobs.

But I found that job online and I said "That sounds really fun. I've never done
formal interpreting, but I'd really like to give it a try." So I submitted all my
documents. I called them kind of like a stalker the next day, and I was like "Hey, I
applied, I'm super excited. Just wanted to make sure you got my documents."
And they're like "Yeah, we got your documents." Basically I'm here. And they
called me the next day and were like "Hey, we'd like to have you in for an
interview." They had me in, they actually made me practice interpreting right
then and there. They pulled up three teachers and said okay, your name is blah,
blah, blah, you're the teacher. This is that. And they gave me a piece of paper and

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[30:15]

they're like interpret. I had never done it in my life and my heart was beating out
of my chest. I was so sure I was not going to get the job-

Vanessa: What an interview.

Ailsa: What an interview, and it was one interview and there was no phone screen. It
was just like come in. So I went in, I had no idea what to expect. I was so nervous
and I told my mother and my boyfriend, I was like "I'm sure I didn't get that job."
It was so scary. My heart was just beating on my chest-

Vanessa: I can’t imagine.

Ailsa: Yeah, it was like really, really nerve wracking. And they called me less than a
week later and were like "We'd love to have you and we think you did really
great. So start next week."

Vanessa: What confirmation too that even though you have that feeling, oh maybe I'm not
good enough that. They said you are. And that's kind of good third person
confirmation.

Ailsa: Absolutely. It just makes you feel like okay, all this studying and everything I've
done wasn't in vain and not that it was because if that's your passion, you love it
anyway. But I mean to hear someone else say like you are good enough. And
most of the people that I work with are native speakers. So I'd say there are
maybe five of us that speak English as a first language and maybe 10 people that
speak Spanish first. So I was like I can hang with the people who grew up
speaking Spanish first and I may not be as good as them, but I speak English
slightly better. So it's like it's a trade off, you at the end of the day, it's just like a
mix of different people with different backgrounds and scenarios.

Vanessa: Yeah, yeah. I think that's all a beautiful metaphor too for my students that just
getting out of your comfort zone and doing something and that confirmation. I
know a lot of people, especially as you know with different languages, once
you're okay like intermediate speaker getting to feeling really comfortable or
fluent, it's hard to see your progress. So like testing yourself by having interviews
like that or different things. Like I always tell my students speak together and
then you'll see oh like three months ago it was really tough to talk to you because
I couldn't express myself. But now we've done it twice a week for the last three
months. Now I feel so much better. It's kind of like a confirmation.

Ailsa: Absolutely.

Vanessa: They can understand me. So I am doing well and that because we always doubt
ourselves.

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[32:19]

Ailsa: Absolutely.

Vanessa: And it's okay, but it's good to confirm that you are improving, especially if you're
working really hard.

Ailsa: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's so many different things that can show progress
with language learning. I mean, maybe you're listening to songs that you've been
listening to for 10 years and now you understand all of those really fast sentences
and you're like hey, I didn't know that that before. I mean, that still happens to
me. I'll be listening to Spanish speaking songs and I'm like oh. Oh, that makes
sense. So you know, just because you don't do great on a test or you do one thing
that you feel like is not great, just keep at it. Because I mean, honestly, I think like
you said, we doubt ourselves and we underestimate ourselves and someone else
out there thinks that you speak great, so don't stop, you know?

Vanessa: Yeah, yeah. And feeling like I am okay. You can always be better, but don't be too
hard on yourself.

Ailsa: Yeah, absolutely. Got to be our own best cheerleaders.

Vanessa: Yes. Yes. Because we are often our own worst critics. Also be your cheerleader.

Ailsa: Yes, absolutely.

Vanessa: Yes. Thank you so much, Ailsa.

Ailsa: Yeah, thank you. It was great to like-

Vanessa: I learned a lot about you, but also I think my students hopefully felt inspired
about language.

Ailsa: Hope so. That was the goal.

Vanessa: Yes, so thank you so much! Bye.

Ailsa: Bye.

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 Transcript Index
This index will help you to quickly match the page and the time in the lesson so that you can
easily follow along and understand each word.

Page 1: 0:00 – 1:54

Page 2: 1:54 – 3:50

Page 3: 3:50 – 5:57

Page 4: 5:57 – 8:02

Page 5: 8:02 – 9:45

Page 6: 9:45 – 11:09

Page 7: 11:09 – 13:13

Page 8: 13:13 –15:17

Page 9: 15:17 – 17:27

Page 10: 17:27 – 19:05

Page 11: 19:05 – 20:42

Page 12: 20:42 – 23:09

Page 13: 23:09 – 25:44

Page 14: 25:44 – 27:49

Page 15: 27:49 – 30:15

Page 16: 30:15 – 32:19

Page 17: 32:19 – 33:26

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