Spiders

Written in March 19th

I am currently sitting in my room staring at a huge black spider on my wall. No bueno! OK, so yes, it is not that huge, but it is thick and black as night and just gross, and I don’t like it. I don’t want it in my room. And, upon closer inspection, I saw what looked like the legs of another one above the first one. The walls and ceilings in this house do not come together to form a nice flush 90 degree angle like they do in the states. Spiders are descending upon me through the space in my ceiling - no me gusta.

I just got done doing a little bit of homework. I went and sat in the living room to do it, so I could spend some time with my family. I feel like even if I don’t say much, it is good to at least be in the same area as my host family. My host dad started asking me if I had any questions. I was actually just looking over my notes from the market visit we had on Friday. I had to find out prices for fruits and vegetables, corn, rice, sugar, butter, coffee, and meat, etc. I also had to pay attention to the hygiene of the market because I’m in the health project.

So, when writing up my “report,” if you will, of my trip to the market, my host father asked it I had any questions. I tried to explain that I wasn’t really studying or doing assignments - I was just writing about my trip to the market. This turned into my host father explaining the differences between vegitales and verduras - which I thought were the same thing. I thought they were both just the same word for vegetables. Apparently that is not the case. Vegitales are things that have flowers - like broccoli and cauliflower and verduras grow undergrownd and are also things like cabbage and lettuce. Also, He said that cabbage is a legumas - which doesn’t make any sense to me. I am going to have to look into their definition of that because to me, legums are types of beans. So yes, I’m confused. The language barrier doesn’t help. The fact that my host dad always likes to mess with me makes it hard to. Sometimes, well, a lot of the times, I don’t understand what he is saying and he laughs at me (not in a mean way, but still). And sometimes I think I understand what he is saying, but he will be laughing and I don’t know why, so I assume that I didn’t understand what he said because I don’t find anything funny about what I thought he said. Spanish is hard when someone is trying to help you but tease you at the same time.

I did strike up a conversation with my host dad and mom to get the conversation away from vegitales vs. verduras. I started asking what things usually cost and compared them to the prices I got when I was at the market. Most prices I got were pretty accurate, but there were a few things with higher prices because I was a “gringo with a lot of money” most likely. That is how Honurans view gringos - we are all rich! Then we started talking about the difference between some Honduran and USA types of foods. Like the lack of butter here in Honduras. They have manteca - which is like Crisco - it is a solid vegetable grease they use like butter to fry EVERYTHING! Then they have mantequilla, which in Spanish classes I learned was butter, but here it is clearly not. Here, mantequilla is like mayo, but it is a dairy product, not made out of eggs like our mayo. We also talked about stinky cheese. That was kind of funny.

I am getting better at having conversations with my host family, but I’m still nowhere near where I want to be with my Spanish. I have my second language interview when I get to FBT. I am really nervous about it. I assume that I will be in Intermediate Mid, I hope so anyways. I don’t feel like I am still in the Intermediate Low category. Since I’ve been here, even though it has not quite been a month, I feel like I have improved a great deal.

In order to organize the party we had Friday night, I had to talk to both our directors in Spanish - they made me. They would only approve it if I asked them in Spanish, which is a good thing, but it was stressful for me. I also had to talk to bus drivers in Spanish - first to see if our driver was going to do it, then once I got on the bus on Friday, I had to talk to him about the price and when to pay him and what he was going to do while we sang karaoke for 2.5 hours - that stressed me out, too. But, I did it! This means my Spanish is improving - I can talk about situations that I have not practiced what so ever. I know that I said things wrong when I was talking to the directors and the bus people, but at least I said things well enough for them to understand what I needed to happen! This is progress! I am excited for the time when I can have a conversation in Spanish without really having to think about it and make my brain hurt!