Last night’s spinning class was fun – we’re up to 5 students now, only one being the instructor’s mother. Last week the instructor had complimented my Spanish and this week she said she could tell that I was speaking more fluidly. I think she’s being pretty genuine; I did pay for the month of classes upfront. When I returned home, I turned on the TV to American Network and watched David Letterman with guest Ellen DeGeneres. American Network has the worst fuzziness of all of the channels, but I cleared most of snow and noise by turning the VHF dial on the television, which shouldn’t affect the cable, but did help for whatever reason. Anything you can think of is on TV here. On American Network alone you can watch Oprah, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, American Dreams, 60 Minutes, The Early Show and much, much more. This network is in English without Spanish subtitles. Most other channels are either dubbed in Spanish or have Spanish subtitles.
School today wasn’t quite as fulfilling as yesterday, but I realize each day will have its up and downs. Those shy, scared, respectful students from yesterday couldn’t be quiet for a minute today - they’ll have assigned seats tomorrow. I had to ask one kid to go to the hallway. When he wasn’t there at the end of class, all I had to do was tell a “prefecto” (a person in charge of discipline, roams the hallway and knows all of the groups’ schedules) and she hunted the kid down and sent him back to me. We could use some “prefectos” in Wilmette!
During class today, we spent a good amount of time reviewing rules, and did so in Spanish and English. They learned how to say, “Be respectful,” “Be patient” and “Raise your hand” among others. I encouraged the students to teach each day’s lesson to their families and to speak to their dogs in English; when the dog begs for food they can say, “Be patient.” Pronunciation proved to be the most taxing part for the students, especially the word “raise,” so I had them say the word with their mouths looking like Popeye’s when he speaks.
When referring to Popeye, that in itself took some time for them to understand who I was talking about. When I said the guy who eats a lot of spinach, they knew who I was talking about, however, they pronounce Popeye as “poh – pay – yeah.” While repeating after me they laughed, as I would have them use different tactics for pronunciation – tucking their chin into their neck to say the “pay” sound in “patient.” I feel badly for them that it’s so hard to pronounce words in English, as Spanish is fairly easy as it’s phonetic. On the other hand, there are many occasions that they only have to memorize one phrase or word in English, whereas there are multiple ways to express the idea in Spanish. For example, “What is your name?” is equivalent to “¿Cómo te llamas? and “Cuál es tu nombre?”
The students are interested in helping me learn more Spanish and are amused that I started keeping a list of vocabulary words for myself. I told them that when they have a quiz they could prepare a quiz for me based on those words. I knew all of the words beforehand (of course), only in Mexico City each is expressed using a different word. For example, I knew that the “calf muscle” is “pantorilla” but today I learned that it is also called “chamorro.” I knew that a “student’s desk” is “pupitre” but now I’ve learned that it is also called “butaca,” “banca” and the part on which one writes is the “paleta.” It’s exciting and exhausting to think how much I will learn each day.
