Say That Again!

There was a chicken heart floating in my soup today.

That pink, veiny, egg-shaped muscle bobbing in my soup was enough to remind me again that I´m not in Canada anymore. Now that I can speak Spanish, this previously strange world has become more familiar, but it still startles me every now and then.

Speaking two languages has opened the door to a whole new world (stop now if you´re singing any Disney theme song!). If I had known how much I would enjoy speaking a second language, I would have tried harder in French. In my opinion, the Tower of Babel wasn´t a punishment, but a gift from God!
However, stepping between two worlds comes with the danger of tripping every once and awhile. For example, there was the time when my VISA lady asked me if my family ate turkey for Christmas. I responded by saying, "Yes, but really, we prefer eating chicken and soap." (jamon = ham & jabon = soap).
Then there was the other night, I was helping a teen hang up a menu for our Café and I asked him to pass me the Tarijas. Tarija is a large Bolivian city, tarejas are scissors.
How can I forget the time when I asked the waiter three times for pizza without oil, when what I really wanted was a piece of pizza without olives. (aceite = oil & aceituna = olives)

I don´t mind being the source of much entertainment for my Bolivian friends, but it goes beyond verbal speech! Their beckoning gesture resembles what we do when we want someone to go away. Imagine, someone calls my name, "Marcée!", I move towards them, they shoo me away, I start to retreat, they call my name again, "MARCÉE!", I hesitantly step towards them, they shoo me away, and so it goes.... I don´t know whether I´m coming or going!

I´ll wrap up with an ancedote courtesy of a young boy at one of the Cafés. Little Joey asked me (in Spanish of course) , "Hermana Marcée, what does "fac oo" mean?" He repeated the word(s) a couple of times, and at first I was sure he was asking me what a "vacuum" was. This made sense to me as the common broom is still the preferred method of cleaning here. It may be obvious to some of you what this lad was trying to say, but it took a couple more repetitions for me to realize that he was asking me about a lovely phrase involving the f-bomb. Thank-you Hollywood for introducing such edifying vocabulary into other countries...you do the rest of English speakers proud.