Conquering Sevilla, one jokester fruit stand owner at a time

After my brush with culture shock last week, I have slowly been evolving my attitude and learning to embrace the hiccups along the way. I have been learning the techniques on how to survive daily life: how to order chicken at Dia, how to step over and dodge the homeless man (who we named Enrique) and his many piece furniture set on our block, and how to make friends with the local fruit stand owner. This week has been all about getting into a new rhythm.

This week in school I have been learning what my tasks will be in the classroom and how much involvement I will have. For a few of my classes, I take about 7-8 students for a 45-minute discussion time, which at first seemed pretty daunting. How do you fill up 45 minutes of English discussion with students who barely speak English and don’t want to learn? I thought that turning it into a game could be fun. I think, however, that my students were having a little too much fun. I never thought that I could be the teacher to yell at students, but I’ve found that sometimes it is necessary to get them to cooperate. The first 15 minutes of my discussion period consisted of them speaking Spanish, running around, and pulling down each other’s pants. Finally, I had to firmly tell them that if one more person acted up, the entire discussion would be cancelled and we would go back to the teacher’s room. This finally got them to semi-cooperate. I even got them to ask each other basic questions in English (do you like shopping? what is your favorite color?).

This week, we were invited to Antonia’s for the afternoon and then ended up staying for dinner. Let’s just say, there’s never a dull moment when it comes to her boyfriend Antonio. When he arrived, we were giving Antonia an English lesson as she cooked tortilla. He asked how to say “buenos noches” and then we were laughing for ages at his pronunciation of good evening (gruff eff-ening). Antonia had three French high school students staying with her for a few days, so we also had some fun trying to speak to them. They spoke very little Spanish and even less English, and even said as Rachel was talking to Antonio that her Spanish was way too fast to understand, which was pretty cool. Before dinner, Rachel and I had some fun messing with Antonio in the form of setting the table. He is very stubborn, and very particular about the correct way for a table to be set, so we got in a good laugh purposefully setting the table wrong and watching the consequences unfold. We even snapped some photos.

One major stepping stone in my conquering Spanish life occurred this morning. After being mocked and laughed at by the fruit stand owner, Rachel and I were determined to either prove ourselves to be competent, or at least get in on the joke. When we walked by him on the way to the grocery store, he gave us a hearty “Good morning!” to which we responded “Buenos dias,” and asked in Spanish when he would be closing for the afternoon (it was a little before 2 o’clock and everything closes for siesta at 2:30). Looking at his watch, he replyed “two….. ahh” then cracked a smile, not knowing the English for 30, and finally broke down to say “dos y media”. Needless to say, we walked away with the last laugh from this confrontation. After doing our shopping at the grocery store, we stopped back to see our friend and get some fruit and veggies. His younger and less trouble-making assistant was helping us, and we were holding our own with the terminology. Our friend then came over and started having a conversation with us… in Spanish. Turns out he is from Argentina, so he related that he, too, is technically American: “Americano del sur”. Score one for us.