Give me a Keys...

Give Me a Keys…(kiss)

            Over the past several weeks I taught my students about minimal pairs. What is a minimal pair you ask? Well, a minimal pair is when two words sound similar to foreign speakers. For example: kiss and keys. If you ever ask a Spanish speaker to pronounce each of these words, you will find that it is very difficult for them to distinguish between the two. For a class I planned a lesson on minimal pairs in the English language. There is an extensive list including some of personal my favorites: kiss/keys, bitch/beach, hurt/heart/hard, very/berry, and bird/beard/beer. This all originated when one of my students was trying to say “the bird flies South for the winter”. Except, I thought she was sayiny, “the beard flies South for the winter”. As a teacher, I try to be as supportive and encouraging as possible. But when I heard a sentence about a flying beard, I honesty had no idea what she was talking about. Soon I realized what she meant to say and just started to chuckle to myself. I have a strict NO SPANISH policy in my classroom, but one of my students raised her hand and asked me, “teacher, How do you say, pajaro, oso, cerveza, aveja, y barba?” At first I was confused and had her repeat them so I could write them on the board: pajaro=bird, oso=bear, cerveza=beer, aveja=bee, and barba=beard. The gears in my brain started to click together. This was a matter of pronunciation.

            One night I went to a discotec in Baños, a small touristy town about an hour away from Ambato with friends for Christie’s birthday. Christie’s students (all girls) from Baños decided to show us around and take us to all the best discotecs. As the night progressed the girls started developing crushes on Krishna and Will, the two attractive gringos that they were hanging out with. They started making their moves on Krishna and his baby blue jeans he recently bought. One of the girls approached Krishna and with the English they knew, “Give me a keys!!!” At this point Krishna was thoroughly confused and pulled his keys out of his pocket for the hotel. I am not exactly sure what happened after that, but needless to say it was a fun night.

            This makes me stop and think about all the things that I mispronounce in Spanish. My Spanish is good, really good. It is at a point where if I make a mistake Ecuadorians don’t really take the time to stop and correct me unless it is a catastrophic mistake. However, this doesn’t happen often.  During my last year of high school I was a teacher aid in a Spanish 1 class. It was the first day and the students were practicing saying in spanish, “when is your birthday? My birthday is on…”. The word “birthday” in Spanish is cumpleaño. The ñ sound is vital and instead students were saying, cumple ano. Mrs. Franssen, the teacher and native Spanish speaker stopped the class altogether and told them, “No, no, no. Do you know what you are saying? Happy butthole, not Happy Birthday”. The class burst out in laughter before correcting themselves and moving on. This also reminded me of a time when my mom, sister, and I ran into a Spanish speaking man looking for the hospital. My mom stepped forward confidently and told him, “continue en este calle y cruz una puta. El hospital es en la derecha.” The man, just stopped and looked dumbfounded and started to laugh. My sister and I both looked at each other and started laughing as well. Basically Mom told the guy to continue on this street and cross the bitch. The hospital is on the right. She was rather pleased with herself until we told her that she said bitch instead of bridge (bitch=puta, bridge=Puente). I commonly confuse the difference between dollar and pain here. That is always embarrassing when I ask the taxi driver, “one pain?” instead of one dollar? But it is okay to make mistakes. If I could give advice I would just say laugh at yourself when you make a mistake, correct it, and move on. If my students accidentally say, “give me a keys (kiss)”, “where is the bitch (beach)?”, “I loaf (love) you” I just smile and pronounce the word for them again. Being a teacher takes a ton of patience, and I just tell them it is okay and to move on. This is definitely a highlight of teaching. I tell them about all the mistakes I make in Spanish, laugh at myself and move on.

Personal Shopper:

A couple weeks ago I asked the secretary at SECAP where she buys her business clothes because I am running low and needed some. Without hesitation, Elizabeth told me to come to SECAP at 9:00am sharp to go shopping with her. Not so bad huh? A personal shopper and new friend. We ended up going to a giant market. It was crazy. There were rows upon rows of random clothing items, food, electronics, basically you name it and they have it. I was overwhelmed with everything around me. Elizabeth guided me through the aisles and aisles of clothing. We stopped at a bunch of different stands to try to find pants. However, I am clearly a giant in this country. It was really hard to find clothes big enough for me. Ecuadorians in general are small people so it was quite difficult to find a pair for me. After several hours we found several pairs of work pants! I got a pair of purple and black plaid (yes, I know) and some dark gray pants. I am pleased with my selection. Ecuadorians also have a thing for wearing stretchy tight pants. This is something I need to get used to I suppose…

So Ridiculous…

Last Tuesday I was in my class teaching when there was an urgent knock on the door. I went to open the door and the secretary was there telling me she needed me to do something right now. It is very important and for the administration. “Ahora? Estoy enseñando mi clase ahora”, “Si, ahora.” So I told my students I would be right back and headed downstairs. Elizabeth had handed me a flash drive and a sticky note with illegible instructions. When I came into the office no one knew what I was talking about. They looked at me with blank faces until Elizabeth showed up again. She opened up the document where I was supposed to be answering questions. I started to read what I thought was a very important document for the SECAP administration. Turns out that it was the director of SECAP Ambato’s English homework. I thought to myself, “You have got to be kidding me. Really? This is not okay.” I asked Elizabeth what this was, and where the director that has chosen to ignore me for the past 5 months was and why I was doing his homework. She told me to wait while she went to get him. He came over and I explained to him, that I should not be doing his homework and that he interrupted my class and that my students were waiting for me. Did he expect me to do his homework? He explained that he didn’t want me to do his homework, but to explain the directions of what he was supposed to do. I thought to myself, “well why didn’t you just come ask me instead of sending the secretary?” This whole situation was so incredibly awkward. I didn’t really know how to react, except to tell him to come and ask me in my class with my students. It was inappropriate to expect me to do his homework. I couldn’t help but sit there exasperated for quite some time. It was so crazy.

Class in Revolt!

Not against me however. Last module I was stationed on the 5^th floor of SECAP in the Auditorium. I like to call it the “pent house”. This really isn’t a classroom at all, but I think they thought it would be good for my class of 40 students that never happened. The first week I had class with my 8 students in the auditorium but then we started moving around because SECAP was having some sort of conference and needed the Auditorium. My class was placed in 6 different classrooms before my students had enough. We were told one room was permanently ours, but then they couldn’t find the key and we had to use a different room anyways. I was annoyed, but I think my students were even more outraged. I suggested that we go and talk to the guy in charge half jokingly, and they agreed! We marched down and claimed we were on strike until we had our own PERMANENT classroom. Our new guy in charge, Fabian is a reasonable guy and made it happen. So, now we have our classroom. Caitlin and Students: 1 SECAP Administration: 0. Go US!

Cotopaxi:

At the first Refuge: 15,780 ft 

Last weekend I conquered a mountain. Well, not quite, but close. One of Krishna’s students asked me if I wanted to go with her to Chimborazo. I wasn’t really sure what she meant. Were we going to just hike around? Climb the mountain? Do nothing? I kept asking for more information but received nothing. Being the flexible person that I am, I decided to put my apprehension behind me and just go for it. I showed up at Parque Cevallos and met up with Pris, her cousin, and his friends. It turns out we were going to Cotopaxi instead of Chimborazo and that it was a big group going and we were just going to be walking around. We took the bus to Cotopaxi and then started climbing the mountain. We made it to the first refuge at 4810 meters or 15,780.6 ft. It is safe to say, that this is the highest I have ever been in my entire life. It was s cool.

Día de San Valentín:

A couple of students from my first class

Valentine’s day this year was the best yet. My students decided to have a party in both classes. My first class technically has 10 students, but 7 students showed up. If my students know how to do something, it is throwing a party. They brought cake, chicken, fries, rice, sandwiches, chocolates, colas, marshmallows, and various candies. We just sat, ate ate, and talked for several hours. It was a great time. My next class did not disappoint either. My students brought streamers and all sort of things to decorate and started the festivities. They brought lots of food and music. There were several speeches, and then they presented me with some really nice earrings they bought for me as a class. It was so sweet, I didn’t really know what to do, except say thank you and give a nice long speech emphasizing that they were my family and how much I loved them. It was fantastic!