Speaking Spanish

I am nearing the end of my second week (that's semana en espanol, for those of you who aren't quite as fluent as I in Spanglish), and I am more or less managing to avoid any major catastrophes with my utter lack of language skills. (As you may have deduced from various posts, I took four years of German in college, preceded by 6 very useful years of Latin in high school. My total amount of Spanish would be a few phrases from Sesame Street. So as long as someone is asking me whether a door is opened or closed, I am all set.)

My Spanish speaking started off well last week. On the first day of our service trip, we went to the Safe Passage office, where we got to pick out two t-shirts. (By the way, my wardrobe has doubled in the last two weeks, as I got two t-shirts from Safe Passage, one from Bowdoin, one from the house building I'll be doing in Costa Rica, and one from the Spanish school. Getting dressed in the morning now is really hard, because I actually have decisions to make about what to wear!) I told the woman doling out shirts that I would like una blanca pico y una verde pico (probably totally screwing up all endings, but whatever). She told me, "Muy bien," to which I responded, "Danke... Bitte.... Scheisse!" (That would be German for Thank you... You're welcome... $#!t.)

While I had the Spanish-speaking Bowdoin folks around me, I pretty much rested on my linguistic laurels and let them do the talking. (I was eavesdropping on a fellow alum who thought he was talking about bacon one day, and I said "I could go for some [whatever the word was he said and I naively repeated]." The person I was speaking to looked blankly at me, and told me I had just said I could go for a Guatemalan woman. Hmmm, not today, I think.)

(By the way, I am happy to tell you that I am able to tune out children in any language. On the van to the amusement park on Saturday, I sat happily thinking my own thoughts while the din of excited children rang around me. Much the same thing happens on field trips at home. Happily, it was the OTHER van which contained the students who all started singing Waddlyacha, for which the other volunteers were not thankful to me.)

This week I am taking Spanish class for four hours each morning, and then doing my own thing in the afternoon. (Sometimes I have homework! I haven't had homework in 15 years. Sad to say, as soon as I pulled it out that first night, I automatically turned on the TV. It worked so well for me in college, why not continue thus? I like to pretend that watching American TV and reading the Spanish subtitles counts as language research.) I am staying with a family, and they chat to me in Spanish. So long as I have context and a fair amount of sign language, I can understand a fair bit, but I am not so good with the speaking myself. I managed to communicate to them that I don't eat breakfast, but I did inadvertantly accept a cup of coffee the other afternoon. (I don't drink coffee.) It came with a big chocolate cookie from this amazing bakery in town, so I decided it was worth it.

Taking Spanish class is funny to me, for I haven't been a student in quite a while. One morning I was learning to tell time in Spanish, so my teacher drew a clock and put the hands on it. She wanted me to read 6:30, but I was hung up on the fact that she had both hands pointing exactly to the 6. As anyone who teaches time (especially to the half hour) knows, when the big hand is at the 30, the little hand is half way to the next number! (I redrew the hands for her, and told her the time.) There was another time when she had me doing a little exercise where I had to change verbs from singular to plural or present to past within the context of sentences I was reading. I could do the exercise because I understood the formula, but couldn't have told you what any of it meant at all. There was no genuine understanding to be had that day!

Yesterday I decided that my Spanish skills were good enough (and I was in dire enough need) that I headed off in search of a place to get my hair cut. (I haven't had a haircut since the Gidget hack job that I had done in June.) The woman said something to me in Spanish, to which I looked blankly, and then she said "Shampoo?" No. No, I do not want a shampoo. No, I have not used any shampoo for the last week. Not sure what she was asking, but I think I answered it correctly. I told the woman that si, I wanted two or three fingers' worth of hair cut off. Then to emphasize the point, I put my hair in a ponytail to say that it still needed to be able to do that. I think my sign language translated to "Please cut it off to this length", for many inches of my hair fell to the floor. (Oh well, it grows.) I did have to do some corrective surgery with some kitchen shears when I got back to the casa, for there were quite a few hairs that hadn't gotten their due trim. Luckily the shaggy look is in. But for $6.60, what can I expect?

This afternoon I think I am going to treat myself to a hot chocolate while I make flashcards for myself. I head off to Costa Rica on Sunday for two weeks of housebuilding, so I'll be using my dictionary to translate such phrases as "Please hand me that hammer," and "I think I just chopped the top of my finger off."