¿Donde esta las Ramblas?
May 9th, 2007 -- Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »Traveling always makes for a great adventure, especially when it comes to language.
This morning, Emily and I set out to the nearby marketplace to get lunch stuff. We perused the endless stand of fruits, vegetables, meats and cheeses. Eventually we settled on one booth. We were nervous. I flipped through my trusty Rick Steve´s phrasebook to figure out all the right saying.
15 slices of chicken?
¿Quince rodajas *point finger*?
1/8th lbs of goat chees–
How do you say 1/8th?! They never taught us this in school!
Hmm I know how to say one quarter. I also know how to say one half. Maybe I can tell them to give me one half of one quarter. No way. Language barrier is one thing, but introducing a math question is recipe for disaster.
After a few panic-filled minutes, we realized that we should just ask for grams. Kgs to lbs.. do the math — do the math. Figured it out! Woo!
The transactions went mostly smoothly. We told them what we wanted. They responded in light-speed spanish. We responded with “no entiendo” (i dont understand) and they kinda just smiled. But we got what we wanted and came out victorious!
Towards the end of the day I had an experience similar to when I was in Florence. And this has to do with the ineplicable thing where people think I’m a local.
We were going into our hostal when an asian guys walking towards me goes:
“oh!! umm ohh!”
Something about it told me he was American (or Canadian).
“Donde esta Las Ramblas,” he said in Spanish that’s worse than mine.
I responded in english telling him where it was. It was all really funny.
Internet times up! Ciao, Pedro