As you can imagine, actually living here for three weeks has presented many situations ripe for language mishaps.  I’m understanding more and more single words, and in some very few cases can figure out what the context is… I consider this something to celebrate as I really didn’t believe understanding would start falling into place, ever, with my ears only hearing endless sentences without breath most of the time.  Actually seemed a little more engaged and less dazed during a recent trip to Dairy Queen (us ice-cream lovers were SO thrilled when we realized that there was a “Dreamy Queen” right in the hotel!!) when a suave man brought a lovely lady in for an ice-cream treat and actually asked the young kid preparing the yummy treats if they were open.   I had to chuckle at the kid’s witty response – “nope, we’re out of milk!” (in Spanish of course!) – this struck me as so funny given the business in question.  They started to laugh, and I actually found myself smiling at them and the fact that I kind of “got it”.   See?  I might learn to speak Spanish after all.

So a few little Styles Family language blooper episodes to share…Funnily, quite a few lately revolve around our meals… living at the Hilton, we eat, A LOT.  Actually, they make so much amazing food available, and I think it is the frequency of and richness of the meals that is baffling our poor guts.  They have offered to create meals that appeal to our palettes and we’ve taken them up on that often, but everything is made with such rich ingredients.  So we suffer 🙂  Meal times are also a great opportunity to practice some basic Spanish.  One night I decide that I should start modelling for the family “giving it a go”, and order my meal from the Spanish side of the menu (note: I did quietly cross-reference with the English side as much tummy-trouble is minimizing my sense of culinary adventure at this time!).  “Senora, what will you have tonight?”, our regular server Miguel asks when it’s my turn to order.  I’ve decided on a shrimp pasta dish – seems pretty safe – “Penne Camarones, por favor.”  This is the first time I’ve ordered in Spanish, so Miguel’s eyebrows raise and he smiles, acknowledging that I’m trying and says, “Good English!” I snap my head up from my menu, look sideways at him and he says, “oops!  I mean good Spanish!” and we all just crack right up.   “I’m so sorry Mrs. Styles (adorably pronounced ‘Meeeses Steeeles’).”

When Mansell was home sick he was very much enjoying a day to himself with Mom:)  Mom was enjoying having his company too.  He was also extremely helpful, volunteering to order the taxi to pick up Caleigh and Hudson after school, as well as organizing our pizza dinner for Friday’s Movie Night.  This involved calling room service about midday to place our order, to be delivered to our room for 7 p.m. – we’ve taken our meal in our room with our movie for the past two Friday’s.  Continuing our weekly movie night ritual here has been a really great carrot to help everyone get through the week; something we all look forward to!   We wrote out the menu he would ask for, and he dialed.   He was pretty funny and flustered by the time he hung up – was definitely a challenge to be understood by the mostly Spanish-speaking fellow on the other end of the line.  He made a crack that “it would be a miracle if we get everything we’ve asked for.”  And so we carry on with our day, resting, downloading our movie and collecting the kids from school, getting homework done and finally it is almost time for Movie Night!  Daddy is a bit delayed with traffic, so our food arrives a few minutes ahead of him.  When he arrives, we are all howling – myself, the kids and the two servers who have brought our table, cracking right up!  In fact I start the second I notice the table as it rolls into the room and on it is our pepperoni pizza, wine for Mommy, Beer for Daddy and THREE MARGARITA’S!?!?  LOL!!!  A popular Mexican drink that the kids enjoy is called “Manzanita” (basically carbonated apple juice) so when Mansell ordered “3 Manzanita’s” for the kids to enjoy with their pizza, the dear fellow who took our order heard “3 Margarita’s”!!!  Too funny!  I assured the servers, who were puzzled at first about my laughter, but who quickly understood this “lost in translation” mistake, that I’m not in the habit of giving the children Margarita’s… woo hoo hoo!!!

Mansell took a language blunder for the team recently at school.  His gym teacher/swim coach, Profesor Luis, announced an instruction:  “Freestyle, there and back. Get out of the water onto the diving platform to start.”  He saw the coach shout out the instruction and because of his water logged and clogged ears, the fact that he’s in the pool where sound is already distorted, and the assumption that we are all making that they MUST be speaking Spanish, Mansell shouts back, “sorry, I don’t speak Spanish, what did you want us to do?”  After an uncomfortable pause,  the coach does speak in Spanish to Mansell’s classmate and new friend Karla to ask her to give Mansell the instruction. He bursts out laughing when he discovers coach had been speaking in English the whole time! It is happening to all of us, we are watching lips move and hearing words come out and assuming that we don’t understand… a mindset shift should come as our comfort with the language grows…in the meantime, we accumulate laughs and empathy for those who are new to a country and don’t speak the language.