On My Psychological Examination and Spanish Skills

I also had my psychological exam today, conducted in Spanish by an outside psychologist, with a little bit of assistance from a Projects Abroad staff (Mariel) when I needed help.

I was asked to draw three pictures of three people, and asked for their names and ages.  One man, one woman, and one person standing in the rain.  I was asked questions about the man and the woman, making up a profile about them.

I felt incredibly nervous/awkward... like when the psychologist asked me to put down a name and age, and I thought she wanted mine so she could file the pictures away, but on the woman's picture, I wrote mine again, and the employee told the psychologist that I was writing my name down.  Oops.
I could only think of Hispanic names, so I struggled to think of names that would perhaps not make me seem so racist.  haha.
 I felt really dumb drawing them (the questions running through my head:  do I draw clothes?  If I just draw a body without markings for clothes, will I be flagged as some strange person?  Should I try to draw shoes, or are blobs ok?  Do I need more defining characteristics to make this drawing obviously a woman?  How do I draw boobs? [I gave up on that, and made the girl be 15 years old to compensate.  except i guess I should've chosen like 12 or something, but then I didn't want to seem like a pedophile by thinking about young girls all the time]) and I really wished I could draw better.  I wanted to ask if drawing stick-figures were ok, but I decided to just not.  Mostly because I did not know how to express that in Spanish.

I also had little idea what to say when I was asked what the man and woman's best and worst part of their bodies were (I wanted to say hands for the worst part because I can't freaking draw hands and they looked so ugly, but I decided that my drawing capabilities were not the point here).
I also felt like an idiot when I said the man's least favorite part was his arms, but I said "armas," and in my head thought, "I'm pretty sure that means 'guns,' and not 'arms.'"

My fears were confirmed when the psychologist looked at Mariel, the employee, and gave a most confused expression.  I couldn't remember the word "brazos" for the life of me, but fortunately Mariel provided it.  I then nervously laughed and was like, "Ooh, armas means more like pistols or something, huh?  I'm sorry." in Spanish, and the psychologist smiled.

I wondered about what these pictures signified... do these pictures represent the masculine and feminine side of me or something?
Some of the other questions and some of my other answers just made me confused and wondering about what I should and shouldn't say.  In the end, I stayed with the safe answers, because I wanted to actually pass the exam.

I hope I'm deemed fit to work with the children.  >_<


Anyway, the thing that hits me the most about Cochabamba is how similar it is to China.  Maybe that's because China's like the only other vastly culturally-different reference I have.  But the broken sidewalks, roads, shape of the cars and buildings... all quite similar to walking down some streets in Shanghai.  I've enjoyed it all so far, but that may be because it's all so new and different.

I've had four adults (my host mom and three Projects Abroad employees) tell me that I speak Spanish "muy bien," which of course makes me happy.  Although then when I was asked by one of the adults (Mariel) what level my Spanish was, Freddy, my supervisor, offered "intermedio" when I was trying to say that I wasn't too sure.  He told me my Spanish was muy bien!  I was going to say Advanced-low, so I was kinda offended, haha.  Then again, I don't know if "avanzado-bajo" would even make sense, so maybe it was better that I didn't say that.

But then, Mariel, after listening to my psych examination, told me that my Spanish was muy bien, so I'm guessing it was better than her expectations (some of my [as far as I know] grammatically-correct long responses impressed me too when I was answering some of the questions).  Apparently, according to Freddy after I asked him, most of the volunteers don't speak much Spanish.  Some don't know any.

I can't really imagine what that would be like, going to a new country where you know basically nothing of the language, considering how fearful I've been about failing in Spanish.  That would just be so limiting... I already feel limited by only being able to understand like half of what my host sister and her friends were saying last night.  I hoped it was majorly because of the 28 hours of travelling/airports that I had before, but I feel in large part it's because I'm not quite up to snuff.  Yet.

Writing another post about the orientation of my placement, which I have yet to see.  I want to designate a whole post to it because it's at once unnerving and frightening, but also intriguing and challenging.  I'll have my work cut out for me.