4. Bread & Titties
Day 65. Can’t believe it’s been already over two months! Tomorrow is my last day at school here in Antigua. I obviously need many more classes, judging by my today’s performance.
To say that the Spanish classes are not easy is a gross understatement. There are many pitfalls which I struggle with on daily basis. One of them is when you have two different words sounding similarly or in many cases exactly same with totally different meanings. For example “pero” and “perro”. “But” and “a dog”. Not even close! And there are many more examples like this. You can imaging the confusion trying to understand what I am trying to say. So …
We have a break every day in school at mid morning. Every day a lady comes with fresh food. You can buy sandwiches, fresh salad etc. You pick and choose your toppings. I like their freshly baked bread with guacamole, fried beans, omelette and bunch of veggies (I know, me & veggies…, I am slipping). Well, today they also had sausages so I obviously wanted to try that as well. So, in my impeccable Spanish I asked for bread with sausage. So I thought. The lady start laughing and asked me when. I didn’t miss the beat and in my best Spanish replied “now”. (doh!) Why is she asking??? Well, the rest of the ladies plus all the Spanish teachers within the earshot were killing themselves laughing. I am used to be laughed at so didn’t pay too much attention to it. Case closed. I’ve got my sandwich and coffee and all is good, right?
Well, not so fast … In the afternoon after school today I received a text from my study buddy who witnessed my stellar performance. And he explained what happened. It turned out that instead of asking for “salchichas” (sausages) I asked for “chichas”. The same thing, right? Well, not really. Chichas in Guatemalan slang means tities! How do I suppose to know that??? So instead of asking for bread and sausage I was asking for bread with titties! No wonder everybody had a field day with that. Well, at least I made people laugh today. If they will remember me for that, I am OK with it.
This is almost on par with the meme about the German Coast guard and sinking ship. Moral of the story is, learn another language and pay attention in school!