Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Drop and give me 20!! Entiendes??

Whew talk about lost in translation today. Apparently behavior in the classroom in Peru is a little different than in the States; even in P.E.,..who knew? ;D
Well it started off in PE where Lucas threw something to the other exchange student, Mariah. Well my "Prof" thought Lucas was disrespecting her so he made him do all these jumping jacks in front of the class. I thought it was funny over the cultural misreading and I..well laughed at him...well then Prof called me out after doing that! Problem is, when a teacher is trying to regain authority over some lesson teaching speech, but the student can't understand a word they're saying...problems happen.
Apparently he thought I was being disrespectful to Lucas when we were just joking around like we always do. However, i was sure at all what he was trying to say to me so he calls me to the front of my class (which by the wasy THEY all understand what he's saying to me..I had no idea) So he told me (as I was too late to find out) that he was telling ME to do jumping jacks as a consequence, and then to apologize to Lucas..but in a demanding way of "APOLOGIZE! IN ENGLISH!!" but I didn't understand. Then Lucas whispered to me in efforts of helping me cut this embarrassing lecture as short as possible, something along the lines of, "apparently you offended me.. he wants you to say sorry" I was so confused. I ended up just repeating, "no, no" (as in No entiendo!-I don't understand you!) in hopes it would remind him that gringa no habla español.
Needless to say, it didn't.
He thought I was just defying him, so he calls me up again and starts yelling, "I'm the teacher, you are the student. You are to show me respect." Unfortunaelty that was all I could pick out from his little esteem-boosting shpeel.
I wonder how proud of himself he felt after giving me such a "meaningful" speech even though he know I had no frikken idea what he was saying.

Anyways, I think my Spanish is improving.
During my CTA class today (it's like science..) I was able to pretty much understand everything I was reading in the textbook..of course..it was all about sex, vasectomies, and contraception...
(yeah, My first speech ever in my new school and I'm to describe what a vasectomy is..)
And does anyone else find it wierd that the only things I was able to understand most that was in Spanish was all about Sex Ed.?? And that I can tell you the word for a castrated male in Spanish (castrado) but I can't remember how to fully conjugate the Spanish verb of "to say" into the present tense yet?
The girls in my reading group certainly got a kick out of it.

oh yeah..I love Discotecas. Insane night..maybe not blog-worthy ;D

5 comments:

  1. Sex education and contraception in a predominently Catholic country...how does that work?

    You just know the word castrado will have to come up (no pun intended, or maybe it was, Mr Benner would be proud...) in conversation a lot now!!

    Oh yeah, the discotecas are blog worthy... ;)

    I've been on you kids so much that I FINALLY started my own blog. We'll see how religious I am about it...

    XOXO
    Robin

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Katie,
    What a ride so far and you are still gaining altitued........meaning, your surviving and learning. Take lots of deep breaths!
    You are doing swell.
    Cheryl (Chelsea's mom)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey its me again, mispelling in previous comment.....altitude not altitued :)
    Cheryl

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you Robin!! Yeah, I really have no idea how that works haha but it was definitely funny to learn...new words and expand on my Spanish vocabulary ;D

    Thank you so much Cheryl!! I've alread learned a lot and time has been very fast! Hard to believe it's only my third week!

    ReplyDelete