El Volcán

May 27, 2010

ALWAYS HAVE YOUR CAMERA!!! You’d think that would be a given for me, but turns out, whenever I leave my camera somewhere that I’m not, awesome things happen, and I can’t document them. Case in point: the volcano that’s about 30 miles from my house erupted today, throwing flaming rocks into the villages surrounding it. Terrible, for sure. Legitimately awful for the indigenous people that live there. But it also coated our street, house, and Victoria’s roses in a thin layer of ashy/sandy/whatever-a-volcano-spits-out stuff, and it looks super cool. But guess what?! No camera. And now it’s raining, so it’ll probably all be gone tomorrow. Gosh-darn-it!

My comprehension and language skills are improving. I can understand about 75% of what Jaime and Victoria tell me, and I can carry on fairly intelligent conversations with them that don’t consist entirely of smile-and-nod or “esta bien.” I get the impression that they dumb down their vocabulary when they talk to me, and I still have to ask for clarification quite a bit, but I’m definitely improving, or have at least gotten to the point where I don’t have to think as hard about what I need to say. The conversation at the supper table tonight was “malapalabras” – dirty words. It all started when Jaime told me that the Spanish for those little floatie things that are left over in a cup of freshly-steeped tea are called “shingas.” And I must’ve given him a bit of a funny look because he started laughing at me, and even more so when I asked him how to spell it. The word “shinga” sounds dangerously close to a Spanish word that means (avert your eyes, you faint of heart) “fuck.” So if I ever decide to use “shinga,” enunciation will be super important.

We took a walking trip around a bit of the city yesterday, and at one point, we crossed the bridge into Zone 12. Not 50 yards into Zone 12, we heard firecrackers just ahead of us. Then we saw a guy go shooting out of a store and book it down the street. They weren’t firecrackers. We sort of giggled nervously and beat a hasty retreat back across the bridge to the relative safety of Zone 11. Turns out Zone 12 is one of the most dangerous in the city.

Our group went to a giant mall today during the afternoon, when our scheduled activity was rained out. We found a bookstore, and I FOUND A COPY OF THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA IN SPANISH!!!! For those of you who don’t know, the Chronicles of Narnia are pretty much my favorite books in the whole world, forever and ever, amen, and I read them at least once a year. So I bought “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” and plan on reading it out loud to practice my pronunciation.

I think that’s about it. `