This is My Brain on Spanish: Learning Language as an Adult

I am sitting in a nail salon in Oaxaca. Carmen, the young manicurist sporting a black t-shirt with a white skull and the words “NEW YORK NEW YORK”, smiles at me hopefully. This, I think, is the test of my Spanish learning so far: nail salon chit-chat. I’m not that good at it in English and for some reason, the thought of it is more anxiety-producing than conjugating verbs. How do I make…