Jueves Marzo 13

I had my first Spanish lesson today. I have a most wonderful teacher named Roxanna, and she doesn’t speak English. We did really well together as I have been trying to learn on my own for 2 weeks now, and she knows the odd word in English. She was trying to express the verb “conocer” to me but couldn’t think how to do it. She asked Ernesto in Spanish “Could you tell us what conocer is in English?” He turned to us and said “No”. We laughed and said fine don’t tell us. He looked confused for a moment and said “No I mean conocer means to know. I know what time it is.” Hahahaha

It was such fun. We were playing a game of dueling dictionaries for a while, arms waving and brows furrowed, but somehow Roxanna was able to teach me quite a lot. In fact she sent me home with work to do, verbs to conjugate. I gotta tell you, I’m getting to old to conjugate. Don’t tell Charles. He still thinks we conjugate like young folks. Hahaha

I’m starting to understand, however, why my father talked the way he did. He was born in Hungary. When he was 30-ish he moved to Germany and learned a new language. When he was 38-ish he moved to Canada and learned yet another language. He was such fun to talk to, but to understand him well, it was really helpful if you could speak Hungarian, German, and English. You usually got all three languages in the same sentence, even if the sentence was only two words long. Hahaha

Trying to learn this new language has opened up the part of my brain where the other languages I know some or all of have been sleeping. Anything is likely to come out of my mouth.. Ya ya ya, I know that’s true at the best of times, but now it comes out in several languages at once. I miss dad.

Well I had a ton of homework to do so after lunch I took my books and went to the office. I bobbed in the ocean, did some homework, and bobbed some more. Best day ever!!!

My new schedule looks like this. Spanish lesson at nine, and then to the café to msn with friends and family back home at 10:30, that’s 12:30 your time. Then I will do the groceries and have lunch with Charlie. After lunch I will go to the office. I hope I don’t exhaust myself. Oh and on top of this grueling schedule Charlie expects me to make some sort of supper!!! PPfffttt! I just don’t have the time for that kind of foolishness! Has the man never heard of take out? I already know the word for “to go” in Spanish. Para yevar por favor. I mean really!

By the way, if anyone would like to join me on msn, my address is boysmom31@hotmail.com simply add me to your contact list and I’d love to chat. It’s so nice to hear a voice from home.




Deep thoughts while swimming in the deep.

Charles and I have this ongoing debate about the tree outside of our cabana. Is it a lime or lemon tree? Neither the colour nor flavour of the fruit will convince us that it is clearly one or the other. One of us thinks it’s lemon the other thinks it’s lime. Suffice it to say Charles is wrong.

A few days ago the fruit guy had these cut up things. He said that they weren’t sweet and he would put salt and lime juice on them. I like to have a new weird thing each day so I got some. Well he put the salt on it and then he picked up a lime. This lime was yellow. He had a yellow lime! When he cut it open it was bright orange inside, but it tasted like a lime. Imagine a yellow, orange fruit that tastes green! How can that be?

Now in Canada when we want a lime we know that it will be bright green on the outside and lighter green on the inside, and it will taste like a lime. When we want a lemon we know that it will be bright yellow on the outside and lighter yellow on the inside and it will taste like a lemon. Orange? Same deal! It’s easy to judge!

Here in Cahuita you don’t know what’s on the inside from looking at the colour outside. You don’t always know from looking on the inside either. You might recognize the flavour, but you can’t tell what it will be from the colour. Like life, you just have to taste and see.