It is always hard to explain feelings with words in one language. Sometimes, I might succeed by explaining the setting and the situation. The way my heart beats excitedly when I remember the fear of letting words escape my mouth in English to someone I did not know for the first time, however, cannot be easily explained in English. On that day, my thoughts were still in Spanish.

I was 15 years old when I visited the United States for the first time. Instead of celebrating my 15th birthday with the common Quincea¤ero of Latin American culture, where a girl celebrates her crossing from “childhood to womanhood” with a big party, I decided to celebrate with a trip from Puerto Rico to California to visit my aunt who is also my madrina (godmother).

That night we arrived at my aunt’s house, exhausted after eight hours of traveling, so we went to sleep.

The next morning, Memorial Day, we went to a festival in one of the Los Angeles Beach Cities.

Suffering from “teenageritis,” I decided to walk around by myself instead of with my family in order to appear “cool.” But there wasn’t any way to appear like a local teenager, because everyone except me walked in bathing suits and tank tops.

My long sleeve T-shirt easily showed that I was not used to a 70-degree day at the beach.

If I had only known I would end up studying in Iowa, maybe I wouldn’t have thought it was so chilly and would have been walking in a tank top as well.

After 20 minutes of walking around, I built up courage to ask for the price of two pairs of earrings I had fallen in love with.

It was the first time that I spoke English with someone I didn’t know.

My exposure to the English language had been through classes in school, Hollywood films, TV shows like “Saved by The Bell” or “Full House,” music videos on MTV and a “Goosebumps” or “The Baby-Sitters Club” series books. This is a somewhat pathetic list, but it was broad enough to help me understand what the people around me said when I arrived in California.

Everyone who heard me speak English considered me to be fluent, but my fear of speaking my non-native Spanish was enormous. So, in my lowest possible voice I asked the lady behind the stand, “How much are these?”

She looked at me in awe and yelled “What? I can’t hear you!” I repeated myself in a higher tone, and although I paid for those earrings joyfully, I thought to myself that knowing another language was the best and coolest thing ever.

Knowing more than one language helps me relate to more people, see the world through different cultures, and understand myself better by thinking in more than one language — since one language might not have the words to explain wisdom or moments that words in another language could explain.

Ever since, I have become somewhat ambitious and obsessed with languages. I wish to learn at least five languages someday.

This Saturday, I will step outside my Iowa comfort zone — yes, I have gotten used to Iowa — and live in France for 10 weeks. I will have to learn how to survive using the French language.

Unfortunately, I am not as fluent in French as I was in English when I first came to the United States.

My exposure to the language is based on two years of French classes at Iowa State, news Web sites and every Audrey Tautou film that I could find and rent.

As I prepare to leave America for the first time, I pray that my fear of speaking my new language disappears.

I also pray that I can watch more French movies with other actors besides Audrey Tautou, and my adventure does not turn out to be like Xavier’s in the movie L’auberge Espagnole.

I don’t want my life to become a parallel of something I watched in a movie; I want it to be more interesting.