Well it´s school.
That about wraps it up. 4 hours a day all spanish. Nothing much else to know. However there has been quite a bit of interesting moments in class. Language barriors lead to some awkward moments. Hopefully I can relay the images through words but if not, just think I guess you had to be there after each of the following.
1. The class is about 7 students 3 American, 1 German and 4 Chinese. The teacher had us put up name tags so she could read our names, but a week into class the teacher still couldn´t get one of the Chinese girls names correct (Xin Ling, pronounced zin ling). She was all over the board from Josie to Zzzz to Chin Chin. Eventually, she gave up and told Xin Ling, "Well, um, your new name is Esmerelda, k?" And that was it.
As close to a picture of Esmerelda I could find
2. Speaking in all Spanish, we rely on gestures and actions to make sense of the new vocabulary presented. Most things presented are pretty straight forward but sometimes things get awkward. My teacher is a 67 year old, gray haired woman. Intelligent, effective, but she´s a bit of a nut. While demonstrating what a Cantante (singer) is she raised her arms over her head and did the beyonce "uh oh" dance....If you need to be reminded of how awkward that is please reread my description of my professora.
3. Xin Ling or Esmerelda has been an...interesting student. She worked extremely hard but had difficulties with the accent and putting sentences together. So one day the teacher was asking about our significant others and it got around to Esmerelda´s turn. She asked if she had a boyfriend and we all assumed the answer was no, but to our surprise she said yes. The conversation continued and our teacher asked what his name was, then Esmerelda replied that she didn´t know and that they just live together in the dorms. We all thought this was odd, and humorous, so our teacher pushed further and asked where he was from. Esmerelda always gets really excited when she knows how to say what she wants in Spanish so without hesitation she replied El soy de Senegal. Now normally this isn´t funny, interracial dating is common place and not really humorous, but picturing these two together would be the most awkward odd couple of all time.
4. In order to find out how to say something in Spanish, we have to ask "¿Como se dice _____ en Espanol?" The blank is usually filled in with "chicken" or "bathroom" or simple words in phrases. However one day our star pupil Esmerelda raised her and asked "¿Como se dice, I´m sorry but I have to leave early beacause I have an appointment that I made a long time ago and I cannot miss it because I won´t be able to reschedule and they will make me pay for the visit even if I do not show up?" ...and she was dead serious
5. My favorite day thus far has been the food day. As we were learning names of various foods we got to huevos, or Eggs in english. One of the girls had absolutely no idea what they were so our teacher began to demonstrate again. She flapped her arms like a chicken and we all followed where she was going. It got interesting after that. To demonstrate the egg connection, she proceeded to squat down in the middle of the classroom and act like she was laying an egg, using her hand to represent the egg as it left her body and landed on the floor (picture this in your head now). the next step was to show that you eat the egg, so she picked up the "egg" off the floor and put it in her mouth... I don´t know if you can follow that decription, but the resulting idea of what a huevo is was not as clear as the professor had intended. Instead the student was shocked and appauled at the idea of eating her own...you get the idea.
6. We ask a lot of questions in class and one day I was asked who in our class I would like to take out for dinner? Not wanting to be the awkward guy hitting on my classmates I took the opportunity to earn some brownie points with our elderly teacher. I responded that I would take Emilia (our professora) but apparently it didn´t translate as easily as I had thought. the teacher stopped what she was doing and gave me the head tilted ice stare and then replied in English "You want to do me, eh?" Now I don´t get embarassed much, but as the class burst in to laughter I glowed and prayed that our teacher didn´t try and take me up on the "offer" lol
So even if it is 4 hours a day, I´m lucky enough to have some good moments to keep me on my toes and laughing.
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