Where oh where has my little voice gone?

Yes, so, I have laryngitis. Badly. I've been completely without a voice for two and a half days now, with no signs of improvement.
I guess it's an interesting time to reflect on the power of language - since I've mostly been stuck without it. So, I can't teach without a voice (unless it's my own class who know me and know not to try any craziness on the voiceless teacher). I can't go anywhere and make myself understood. My daughter has had to order dinner for us at Culver's. I've been stuck in my house for days with no one to talk to - can't even call a friend. I have had to cancel any plans I had for the weekend, as they all involved talking with friends. I'll have to go to my new class tomorrow and introduce myself without speaking, and sit for three hours without participating.
Now, I know this will go away. It can't last more than a few more days (right?). And, I can completely understand everything going on around me, so that's good. Still, it's a good lesson in how frustrating and difficult life can be without a voice - whether due to illness or unfamiliarity with a language. The smallest tasks become daunting.
At least I've had a bunch of time to work on my Spanish. I've listened to hours worth of podcasts and written essays galore in the past two days.
I'm signed up to take the Written Proficiency Exam again next week. I really believe my written Spanish has improved greatly over the last three months. I'm going to pass this time!!

Drudgery

We're slogging toward spring here in Wisconsin, and that's an apt metaphor for how I'm feeling about Spanish since my breakthrough. (By the way, it did continue, as long as I was teaching. Since that time I've been doing more bilingual support and less lead teaching, and so some of the effects of the breakthrough have dimmed.)
I've been really busy, subbing every day, and then doing textbook editing after getting home from that. And I've fallen out of the habit of practicing at home as much as I had been. This week, I have Tuesday and Thursday off (!), so maybe I'll get back in the swing of it a bit.
I'm finding the podcasts Showtime Spanish, to be less useful than the Coffee Break Spanish ones - although it is much more at my level, so it's good to be able to listen to their more lengthy and complex conversations.
One thing I did do recently, was to finally find some Spanish books written at my reading level at school. (God, I think they're second grade.) Anyway, I read about 20 of those last week, and took a lot of notes on idioms. My favorites so far: Feliz como una lombriz. (Happy as a clam - sort of.) and Mas soso que un huevo sin sal. (Duller than an egg without salt.) I'm in the process of memorizing about 20 of them.
I'm getting anxious to take the Written Proficiency Exam again soon, before my long term subbing starts, and I have NO time to write. I think I'll schedule it for the week after next when the girls have all their spring music concerts that I want to go to anyway.
Hopefully, that will give me a little time to practice - assuming my new class (Paradigms) doesn't kill me first. I'm so not in the mood for meaningless schoolwork.

Breakthrough?

So, I was subbing today in a bilingual kindergarten class - the first bilingual subbing I've done in a couple of weeks, since I've been trying to knock off my student teaching hours lately. I think I'd forgotten how much Spanish I have to use with the kinders - 100%! Anyway, for whatever reason, today, without actually deciding to, I stopped trying to limit myself to what I'm sure I know when I spoke. Before, I had been careful to try to say those things I knew I could say well. But today, I just let it fly. And yeah, I was tripping over my own tongue fairly frequently, and I actually did get some confused looks now and again - so my ability to convey my message was sometimes too limited. But still, I felt this odd sort of opening in myself of an area I hadn't even really known was closed.
Interesting and very cool.
I'm there again tomorrow. We'll see if it continues...