speaking in tongues - updated!

Update:

I saw this while walking home today and laughed out loud. Yet more photographic proof of my linguistic foibles-----------------------------------

When I left the states, Brendan informed me that he was eagerly awaiting a blog post, detailing the myriad of ways that I would be mis-using the language down here. I've put off writing this until I had a little collection for you all. I must say that rather than embarrass myself in a classic sense, I find that I'm constantly not taking the time to read simple things like street signs and the like. We've been in this apartment just over a week and the street I walk up and down every day is San Isidro. It wasn't until two days ago, that Cait and I started noticing the butchering that we've been giving road names. We've been calling this street San Isidoro (ee-see-doh-roh). Immediately, it was clear that in the effort to not put our feet in our mouths...we've been screwing up these small things. Even more clearly was that we were screwing them up in a way that fits into a stereotypical spanglish translation just throw an oro, ita, ito, ella on it!

That said, I have had some outstanding moments of poor translation. While looking for our first apartment, we were trying to make conversation with the awkward woman who was playing her seduction music for us. I was trying to compliment the few things we liked about the place, and told her that I loved "this month right here, it's so nice!" mesa = table mes=month That was a pretty innocent, but was only a harbinger of how this dangerous behavior was going to affect me.

The next two instances happened while I was talking to our landlord, Nelson. He was over at our apartment with a contractor, fixing our blinds. The running joke of the evening was my poor spanish and that they could say whatever they pleased. From the kitchen, I heard him laughing with the repairman and was desperate to jump in... as if I understood. I had heard him say the word "punta" and ran with it. The next five minutes were spent trying to describe what punta/puta mean as swear words, and that he'd been calling me one to see if I was listening. Turns out, he was referring to the tip of the curtain rod...punta = tip

Finally and possibly the best, was while signing the contract for our apartment. We were sitting at a table at a lovely sidewalk cafe with Nelson. Getting down to business, I thought I'd help things out by asking Nelson if he needed a pen to sign the contracts with. Watching Nelson and Cait break down in laughter was not in my plan so I asked what was so funny. They explained that pene in spanish is penis. I had, fairly loudly on a street corner, asked my new landlord... "do you want a penis, because I have one for you?" Needless to say, I've become less adventurous with guessing at the spanish language. Hiking in the national park the next day, I was presented with a little proof that, what I said really wasn't appropriate...in the form of good old fashioned graffiti.