So this thought doesn’t cloud everything else I write, I need to get my rant about the way Spanish is taught in the US out of my system. Think about it… When a baby is born they cannot talk, read or write. At first their brains only hear the language. Only after that do they start to repeat words and then sentences that people say. Last, they go to school where they increase their vocabulary and learn to read and write. Now think about a Spanish class in the US… Very early on the teachers have their students writing and reading, but to a large extent listening to and speaking the language are glossed over (maybe I have just been in the wrong classes. I’ll let you be the judge). As a result, you get students who are really good at reading articles (the newspaper, etc.) and writing essays.
As a result, my first weekend was a VERY LONG and VERY TIRING weekend. My brain had to be on all day, every day. Think about how you feel when your studying for an exam – learning, reviewing, whatever all that material. That was every moment of every day of that weekend. There were many times when my family probably thought I was completely retarded, but I became proactive. Every time I come across a word in conversation, reading, etc. that I do not know, I confess my ignorance. I have them explain the word to me and I write it down. If I still need to, I look it up in the dictionary I brought with me. I’ve come up with an acronym to describe my attitude towards some of the words – the words I am shocked not to know after studying Spanish for 5 years in middle and high school and 2 semesters in college. It is HTFDINKTWB. I can’t spell it out on the internet, but maybe some of you can figure it out. Sometimes I words down even if I already know their meaning (I learned very quickly that it is one thing to know a word when you hear or write it, but completely another thing to be able to recall it quick enough to use in conversation). Also, every night before I go to bed I review verb tenses. If you think conjugating verbs in an essay is hard, try conjugating verbs in a spoken sentence in 1 second or less while you have a forkful of rice in your mouth (yes… they REALLY like rice down here). Just to give you a rough idea, I had already written down approximately 120 words by Sunday night (and it’s grown even more since then). Now, let’s put this in perspective. Although some sources disagree, it is thought that the average vocabulary of a 16 year-old is 10,000-12,000 words. If I only learn 10 new words a day I will have learned over 1,000 new words by the time I leave. Combine that with the words I already know and the words I learn but don’t write down and maybe I’ll just be… an Ecuadorian 13 year old? I’d be happy with that!!!!
Some more about my family. My mom’s name is Yolanda and divorced her husband 2 years ago (the divorce rate is around 50% in Ecuador). She works for her brother’s wife in Quito, but is trying to get a new job. At home she is always running around doing things and talking a mile a minute. I don’t know how she makes it through the day without collapsing.
My older brother is Raul and is 18 years old. He has completed one semester at university and has 8 to go (the vast majority of university students here begin school in January). The two of us get along extremely well and he is great at putting up with my Spanish and helping me along. I basically go everywhere he goes.
My younger brother is Martin and is 8 years old. He begins school sometime later this week (although he doesn’t know when…. ), is a professional whiner and is quite large (when his mom introduced me to him she literally said, “Martin is the fat one.” She then walked over to him, rubbed his belly and said, “You’re fat. You need to lose weight” There is no social stigmatism here around telling someone they are fat or even using it as their nickname…). He also seems to go out of his way not to talk to me. Not exactly what I was looking for in my younger brother, but I have vowed to become friends with him. He doesn’t know it yet, but it is going to happen.
Friday night Raul and I ended up going to a birthday party for a 17 year old (the friend of a friend…). Two things I learned… First, birthday parties for 17 year olds are a little different in Ecuador than any 17 year olds birthday I have ever been to before. Although the drinking age is 18, a lot of kids drink (especially the Ecuadorian males. I’ll go into that in another blog). The alcohol was flowing, there was a DJ and these kids would put ‘good’ dancers in the US to shame… Second, a lot of the Ecuadorians have much lighter skin than you might suspect (because of the Spanish influence). I saw a lot of people that to me looked like Americans or Europeans. But, no - I was the only Gringo there…
Saturday morning I made my first big mistake in my new home. I rolled out of bed and immediately walked out of my room into the kitchen. Immediately my mom bombarded me with Spanish, sat me down and put a full breakfast in front of me. I would have had a hard enough time speaking English 5 minutes after I had woken up. Spanish was brutal. Also, breakfast turned into one of those meals that I had to take one bite at a time (I had no appetite, but had been told that if you did not eat the food it could be taken personally). I only thought one bite into the future and eventually finished my eggs with ham and cheese, fruit, bread with cheese, juice and coffee (although, the coffee is made with instant coffee mix and milk and is the best coffee I have ever had. It should be called leche con café and not café con leche). From then on I have always showered and made sure I am fully awake before I venture out of my room.
That afternoon, after cooking in the sun for two hours while we watched a parade (the sun really is that strong in Ecuador), having a cookout and watching the World Cup qualifier between Ecuador and Colombia (Ecuador lost 3-1) Raul and I went to la plaza de los torros with some of Raul’s friends. That was by far the craziest experience I have had so far. The plaza (sort of like a stadium – only in purpose, not construction) is temporary and is built every year. However, when it is built it is built using logs, 2-by-4’s, rope and nails. It is truly one of the most incredible sights I have ever seen. As we approached la plaza an ambulance sped away with its lights and sirens on (I wasn’t quite piecing things together yet). At the plaza it quickly became apparent that I didn’t always understand exactly what was being said in Spanish (when people actually went out of their way to slow down for me. I knew I had no hope in conversations between Spanish speakers – regardless of the context). One of Raul’s friends had asked me earlier if ‘I wanted to go to the bulls’. I said ‘Yes, that would be really cool. I’ve never seen the bulls before’. However, at the plaza he immediately told me to follow him and he approached the entrance to the ring where the bull was running around. I quickly realized that earlier he had asked me ‘if I wanted to go into the ring with the bulls’. I quickly walked back to Raul. I had no desire to have an encounter with an upset bull and I was wearing a RED shirt. Instead, we climbed a ladder to the second story of the stadium (this ‘structure’ was 4 stories tall) and watched from a safe distance. In the brief time we were there I saw the bull maul (that’s the most fitting word I can think of) 3 people (each time this was greeted by cheers and applause from the crowd…). Two were able to get up and run once the bull left them, one had to be carried away. The ambulance that I saw earlier made a lot more sense now. And, this whole time I kept thinking to myself how unsafe the wooden structure probably was. As if on cue, the railing a lady was sitting on snapped and she fell to the wooden floor. As we drove home in the back of one of the friend’s pickup truck another one of the friends proudly told me that la plaza de los torros has only collapsed (only a section collapsed) once in the last 7 years… I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that new piece of information.
When we got home we politely turned down the offer to go with some of the friends to a casino in Quito (they really are a spontaneous group) and I went to bed. I was both physically and mentally drained.
Sunday was a much quieter day. I was able to take a mid-afternoon siesta (my mind was numb from all of the Spanish) before we went into Quito to see Martin and Raul’s dad and some other family members. Again, I got to feel like a 5 year old idiot around the extended family, but I was getting used to that feeling by then. On the way home we stopped for dinner and I had my first success of the weekend – I got them to laugh at a joke (and to laugh at a joke one has to understand the joke… I had said some earlier in the weekend, but they had only been met by blank stares as a result of my poor Spanish). On that positive note, I went to bed. I had made it through the weekend.
It’s late here, I’m tired and I am sure you are all sick of reading, so I’ll save this week’s adventures for my next post. Here is a picture of my two brothers, though.
.jpg){kind=small}
No comments:
Post a Comment