Dia de San Valentino feliz! [Happy Valentines day, for those of you who are more spanishally challenged than others.]
Tuesday will mark the beginning of our third week here, though it feels like we've been here much, much longer. It's strange to think that 2 weeks ago today I was rummaging through REI's garage sale and procrastinating packing on a cold January day in Boston.
It's been interesting stumbling around with my Spanish. When I have time to think and translate everything I want to say, I can work it out in my head pretty well and come up with something close to correct. But when I actually need to use my Spanish, I almost never have the luxury of a minute or two to work out my sentences. Instead, I stumble through and use a lot of sign language and Spanglish. It's definitely getting easier with practice, but as soon as I stop thinking about every word and things start to flow better, it starts coming out in Hebrew.
On Friday morning, we did a trash clean up in town. The streets of Puerto San Carlos are lined with trash--plastic bottles and bags, cigarette butts, half eaten lollipops, bits and pieces of unidentifiable broken plastic, foam, or other material, and in preparation for the whale festival in march, we do weekly clean ups of town. As we walked down the streets with our garbage bags, a man sweeping out his coffee shop asked us if we spoke Spanish. We gave him our standard response: un poquito ("a little") and he began asking us when the English classes that SFS runs were going to be happening this semester. We didn't know,and were looking for one of the people who would know. As we were explaining this to the man in Spanish, I thought we were doing pretty well. As we looked, I tried to explain that we were "buscamos a alguien que..." (we're looking for someone who...) and as I paused to figure out how to say "knows when the classes are," he interjected with "who speaks Spanish?" ... oh well, we tried. We found someone who knew the answer to his questions, and went along our trash cleaning way.
Later in the day, we went to a technical school in Ciudad Constitucion, which is the closest city (about an hour away from Puerto San Carlos) and had a "language exchange" with English students there. It was SO much fun! Basically, we sat in little groups (one of us to 3ish of them) and spoke Spanglish. We attempted to speak Spanish to them and they attempted to speak English to us. They ranged in age from 13-21 (ish) and though their English was definitely a lot better than our Spanish, I think we all came out of it better off.
It was fun trying to explain where Maine is (above Florida, close to Canada but not in Canada) and talking about American movies, actors, and TV shows with them. I got to talk to 4 different groups, which was really cool. Each of the groups had a different feel and talked about different things. We talked about siblings, travelling, our best friends' names (they kept wanting me to point out my "mejor amigos" and were sad for me that all of them are in Maine...), what we do for fun, and lots of other things. A group of 14-16 year old girls that reminded me of my sister wanted to know why I don't have a boyfriend, a group of boys was shocked that I have never been to Disneyland or Disneyworld and that I didn't really have a favorite soccer team, but I explained ultimate Frisbee (or at least, I tried to) and we had fun talking about baseball and the World Series. They wanted to know about snow (I told them about how my friends at home like picking me up and throwing me into it, which they found very entertaining) and I wanted to know what their favorite thing about Baja is.
Though we live in very different places and lead very different lives, getting to know these kids was pretty much the same as getting to know any other kids back home. We giggled over our language mistakes, made jokes, talked about things we had in common and asked what we were curious about in each others lives. For some reason, a lot of people get this idea that people in different places are different, but I don´t think that´s true. Yeah, we've had different experiences, hold different points of view, religious beliefs, and are parts of very different cultures, but at the heart of it, kids are kids and people are people, and I'm pretty sure that any two people, anywhere, could find something in common, something to talk about if they just took the time to look.
Next week we're off on a turtle monitoring camping trip from Tuesday-Thursday, which I am SO excited for. I can't wait! It may involve riding a turtle! More on that later, and more photos on Picasa as soon as the wireless works again.
Love and hugs!
Emma
Later in the day, we went to a technical school in Ciudad Constitucion, which is the closest city (about an hour away from Puerto San Carlos) and had a "language exchange" with English students there. It was SO much fun! Basically, we sat in little groups (one of us to 3ish of them) and spoke Spanglish. We attempted to speak Spanish to them and they attempted to speak English to us. They ranged in age from 13-21 (ish) and though their English was definitely a lot better than our Spanish, I think we all came out of it better off.
It was fun trying to explain where Maine is (above Florida, close to Canada but not in Canada) and talking about American movies, actors, and TV shows with them. I got to talk to 4 different groups, which was really cool. Each of the groups had a different feel and talked about different things. We talked about siblings, travelling, our best friends' names (they kept wanting me to point out my "mejor amigos" and were sad for me that all of them are in Maine...), what we do for fun, and lots of other things. A group of 14-16 year old girls that reminded me of my sister wanted to know why I don't have a boyfriend, a group of boys was shocked that I have never been to Disneyland or Disneyworld and that I didn't really have a favorite soccer team, but I explained ultimate Frisbee (or at least, I tried to) and we had fun talking about baseball and the World Series. They wanted to know about snow (I told them about how my friends at home like picking me up and throwing me into it, which they found very entertaining) and I wanted to know what their favorite thing about Baja is.
Though we live in very different places and lead very different lives, getting to know these kids was pretty much the same as getting to know any other kids back home. We giggled over our language mistakes, made jokes, talked about things we had in common and asked what we were curious about in each others lives. For some reason, a lot of people get this idea that people in different places are different, but I don´t think that´s true. Yeah, we've had different experiences, hold different points of view, religious beliefs, and are parts of very different cultures, but at the heart of it, kids are kids and people are people, and I'm pretty sure that any two people, anywhere, could find something in common, something to talk about if they just took the time to look.Next week we're off on a turtle monitoring camping trip from Tuesday-Thursday, which I am SO excited for. I can't wait! It may involve riding a turtle! More on that later, and more photos on Picasa as soon as the wireless works again.
Love and hugs!
Emma
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