Back to school...

Ok, so clearly I can tell that things are never going to "calm down" around here. Every day there are going to be more adventures, more stories and more mishaps. But I do want to make sure you are all getting a picture of the "day-to-day" life here in Guatemala (I promise NEVER to call it "Guatemala in a nutshell" after yesterday´s comment from Anonymous) So as promised, today I am going to tell you all about The Great Adventures of Spanish School.

I´m not sure I´ve mentioned exactly how Spanish school works but long story short, for the first two weeks while I´m here, I have 4 hours of Spanish class (now that I think about it, the story really isn´t actually that long to begin with!) Anyway, last Monday I met the woman who would be my Spanish teacher for a whopping 40 hours. Her name is Mary (although for the first week I thought it was Maria...). For you visualists out there, here she is:

So many of you out there may be thinking this is going to be a boring blog entry and are currently considering navigating away from my blog and opting for something more interesting on E! Online. Don´t do it...I promise you that this gets more interesting.

It´s basically completely up to me how I want the class to go. For any of you reading this who know me at all, you know that I have a very severe, undiagnosed case of ADD. So there is no possible way I was going to be able to conjugate verbs for 4 hours a day. Also for those of you who know me, I have virtually NO filter. None. No idea what is appropriate or inappropriate to discuss with this woman I really do not know. So take 40 hours+ADD+no filter and you get some seriously intersting conversations.

One entire day we went back and forth trying to explain expressions to each other. It took me about an hour to explain why "The grass is greener on the other side" makes any sense at all...and by the end, I´m not so sure it actually does make any sense. I also tried to teach her "You can´t teach an old dog new tricks"...again, not easy with limited language.

But my favorite moment of Spanish class came today less than 5 hours ago. For those readers with children in the room, this may be a good time to tuck them into bed. So somehow (please don´t ask me how) the subject of religious rituals came up. Well, one thing led to another and I just happened to mention the word ¨circumsision.¨ Suddenly, a shy Mary became like a curious kid. She said that she had heard the word but had no idea what it was and could I please explain it to her.

Well, I immediately had to turn to the "pen..." section of my dictionary (turns out that "penis" is "penis" in any language) and with my rudimentary Spanish explain to Mary that circumcision is when we basically cut the end of the penis off. Well, if I had the picture of her face at that moment, I think this blog would be one of the most popular blogs on the web. It was hilarious. The pure look of horror on her face was priceless. I tried to explain to her that it was relatively painless and that we did it on little tiny babies...clearly, this argument did not help (acutally, I think it only did more harm to my argument). She kept asking me "Why? Why? Why?" Again, trying to explain a combination of medical reasons and a pact that Abraham made with God was not exactly within my Spanish capabilities...so, after a while, I just looked at her and said, "Do you want to hear another English expression??" Suddenly, that seemed much easier...

Anyway, despite a few mishaps, Spanish school has actually been really good and my Spanish is much better than I thought. And today, I took Mary on in an intense game of Spanish Scrabble...I lost (she was RUTHLESS) I´m a pretty competitve person (perhaps the understatement of the year) so if losing won´t get me to learn Spanish, nothing will...

I think that is all for now. Everything else is going really well...and if any of you need help explaining any barbaric rituals to foreigners, you know who to turn to...

xoxo,
Debra