A Few Embarrassing Stories

It should be expected that with language barriers come hilarious misunderstandings. This week, I was (to my team's entertainment) bl-ss-d with 2 such instances.

A few nights ago, as our host home was preparing for a small group B-bl- study, 19 year-old "joven" (young person) sat down on the couch next to me. This guy has been around the house quite a bit, and we know him un poco (a little). I say to him, "Yo!" (meaning the American greeting), however, this word translates in Spanish as, "me!" This is how the conversations goes:

me: "Yo!"
guy: "What?" (in English)
me: "Que paso?" (Sp: "What's up?")
guy: <pause> "Hold my hand." (in English)
me: "Que?!" (Sp: "What?!")
guy: "Hold. My. Hand."
me: <pause> "No."
<longer pause>
me: (to the guy) "Tell Jean what you said."
guy: (to me) "Shut up."

I wish I could convey the humor better. You'll have to imagine thick accents, and the knowledge that I've never heard this guy say anything else in English. I wondered if someone told him to learn that phrase and say it to "the gringos."

When our 4 year-old host brother was pr-y-ng before a meal near the beginning of our time here, he said (spoken in Spanish, translated in English), "And thank you for... for... the... the... the... gringos." :)

The other funny misunderstanding...

Sometimes when we visit our neighbors, they try to think of questions to ask us. One such question is whether we are students, or if we worked in the past. And if we worked, what kind of work? My typical response sounds mostly like this:

(spoken in Spanish, translated here in English)

"I worked at a university in a big dormitory with over 100 girls. I was the director for 3 years."

Unfortunately for me, the word I was using for dormitory ("dormitorio"), is actually translated as "bedroom." Whoops! I told a lot of our neighbors that I worked in a big bedroom with over 100 girls! I realized my mistake in time to ask their forgiveness, and correct myself. :) You live and you learn, yeah?