¿Me Entiende?

"The biggest miscommunication is to assume communication has taken place." ~Anonymous

I never realized just how important communication was until I was forced to. This past Friday, I got terribly sick and had to go to the hospital. Now, going to the hospital is one thing, but going to a hospital where they only speak Spanish is a different story. Yes, I speak some Spanish. Unfortunately, we haven't covered very much vocabulary pertaining the medical field. After my appointment, my professor, Dr. Boe, and I went to the counter to figure out if insurance would cover the bill. With my Spanish-English Dictionary in hand, I tried to communicate with the secretary, but my vocabulary and grammar knowledge wasn't sufficient enough to get across my point about the insurance situation. The secretary left to find someone who knew how to speak English, but after fifteen minutes of waiting, she still hadn't returned. We found out we could settle the financial details the next day, so we just ended up leaving. In the end, Dr. Boe and I were able to decipher enough to get by during the actual appointment, but needless to say, it was still pretty scary, especially without having something as simple as the comfort of your native language. I guess a good thing that came out of it was that it got me to think about why it's so important to know another language. Not only would it have been more convenient for me to know Spanish fluently for my own sake, but it would have been nice if I had a doctor that spoke more than five words in English too. Since I'm majoring in Education, I decided it would be a good thing to minor in Spanish too. Spanish is a very common language in the United States now, and besides loving the language, I realize how important it is becoming to know more than one language, especially with the recent boom in globalization. There are more foreign companies and immigrants in the U.S. now more than ever. Even though English is a pretty well-known language all over the world, it just doesn't seem to suffice to know only one language anymore. I don't want to be one of those people who is ignorant of other languages and cultures. Becoming fluent, or at least having a solid background in a different language, not only makes your life easier, but can also help others that are put in a difficult situation.