Lost in Translation

Well, I finally experienced my first major conflict due to the language barrier. Here's the whole story.

It started several days ago when I told my señor I was meeting up with a friend. My friend wanted to see what my room was like, so I took him inside. When my señor saw us, he promptly kicked us out. I felt bad and later that night I apologized. He asked if I read the rules and I said I'd reread them. The IES rules say you can't bring people over to homestays without asking permission first, so I messed up. I said I was sorry and we seemed to be getting along fine since. He seemed to appreciate me trying to talk to him in Spanish and he'd help me out with sentence structure, words, etc.

Last night (Tue night), three of us homestay kids and my señor's son were eating dinner. Things were going well when his son dropped his spoon on his placemat. He got some yogurt on it and I wanted to know how to say "make a mess" or "mess." The one student who knows a lot of Spanish didn't know, so I asked my señor how to say it. He did not understand so the other kid tried to explain in Spanish. This is where the trouble begins.

My señor turned to me and kept saying what I thought was "my son educate you." The other kid translated it to be "etiquette" (in Spanish, it is etiqueta, pronounced Et-ee-kay-tah which kinda sounds like education). He was saying his son has better manners than me and I had bad table manners.

At this point, I thought he was joking, so I said something like "Oh, I'm sorry. I'll be better, haha." Then I realized that he was actually yelling at me. He continued yelling at me in Spanish, with the other kid translating when he could get a word in.

From what I understood and from what the other kid said, he said I am childish, shouldn't pick on a little boy, and shouldn't have brought my friend over. My señor also said I'm a guest in his house and he could kick me out with one phone call.

That basically sums up a 10 minute chew out. I had no idea what hit me, and not being able to respond in the language was hard. My RA is scheduled to visit us on Thur at 7:30pm and I emailed her, explaining what happened and what we should do. I'm hoping she can help explain that I wasn't insulting his son, which I think is why he was so angry. I know I should not have brought my friend over, but other than that, I didn't' do anything wrong.

So, there you have it. I'll let you know how it ends up. If all else fails, I can always transfer to another homestay. Don't worry, more fun posts will follow once this gets cleared up.

And I saw a couple funny English shirts, but dangit, I just can't seem to remember them. I'm also planning on getting a haircut on Friday. Should be interesting...