So, in the last 5 blog posts I tried to give you just a taste of what our time here in Iquitos has consisted of. I hope that as you have read a long you have begun to conjure images of the landscape and to understand the personalities of the people with whom we work. But, I think you know where this particular blog post is going.
My linguistic adventures began the minute we landed in Miami. As I mentioned in a previous post, the second the wheels of the airplane touch the steaming Florida blacktop, it's all "Holas" and "Gracias". Good luck getting around the airport if you don't speak Castellano or can't fake even a little bit of Spanglish. For those of you who are panning on traveling there any time soon, I'll help you out a bit. Just add an -o or an -a to the end of any noun or adjective and for verbs replace the last three letters with either "-er", "ir", or "ar". While your pronunciation might be a little off, that should be enough to at least get you through security. It wasn't until the flight from Panama City to Lima, however I made my first language blooper. Luckily I was sitting next to a man who was half asleep, whom I would never have to speak to again, and fortunately I didn't say anything grossly inappropriate or offensive. In order to break the awkward silence and to try and make a new companero. I looked at his watch (to hint at the topic I was going to bring up, but he apparently didn't get the hint. When I asked if we would be in a different time zone he responded by telling me that it was cold in Lima. It wasn't exactly the information I was looking for, but good to know, and I knew I wold find out about the time difference soon enough.
The next blooper I made, however, was a little less forgivable, slightly more embarrassing and definitely more inappropriate. It all began on a muggy and rainy morning here our third day in Iquitos. I don't even think I knew everyone on the Kallpa's team's name, and I was still referring to Cecilia as Nikki (there is no Nikki in the office FYI) and Emilio as David. We were all sitting around, listening to the droplets of rain as they hit the flooding river with a clink, when we began conversing with the Kallpa team. The next fifteen minutes felt like a review of an eighth grade spanish class covering the topic of hobbies and interests. You all know which one I am alking about, the one, where you partner up with a friend and run down your extensive vocabulary list consisting of every sport and past time in the world and alternate asking each other about each other's interest. For those of you who need a refresher the exercise typically goes like this...
Person 1: Te gusta jugar el balencesto (Do you like to play basketball)
Person 2: Si, me gusta jugar el balencesto, Te gusta la musica jazz? (Yes I like to play the basketball! Do you like jazz music)
Person 1: Si, A mi me gusta la musica jazz (Yes, I like jazz music)
And so the conversation goes on and on and on, until you have asked each other about their feelings towards everything from skiing, to skydiving. So, we broached the topic of dance and it came out that while Sarah like ballet and jazz that I had taken some classes in capoeira. They got a kick out of that since there is a fair amount of capoeira in Iquitos due to Brazilian influence on song, dance, and art in this particular Amazonian region.
After some convincing, I was going to teach them a little bit of capoeira. The fact that the rain was causing me to slip and slide was embarrassing enough, but when I suggested we get in a "roda" (meaning circle but pronounced joda in Portuguese) they cracked up laughing. They promptly explained to me that I had just commanded them to partake in a giant....well, I think you can figure it out given the title of the blog post). It was clearly not what I was insinuating and after turning the shade of a mamey (a delicious red fruit here) we all laughed about it and I knew that it would be just another memorable moment of my time here in Iquitos.
Wow I love this post!!!
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