Simple Spanish for Students

About the only trouble with vacationing in Mexico is the language barrier.
Sure, most Canadians know the basics (Uno cerveza por favor), but if you want to get out of the hotel bar and access the culture, it’s important to know a few sentences.
Like everyone else, I had a phrasebook, but unless you’re looking for a museum (Me gustaria ver el museo) it’s pretty useless.
So, without further ado, I present the UBC Grad Student Guide to Essential Spanish.
When you meet a member of the opposite sex
Soy Soltero. (I’m single.)
¿Cuál es se número de teléfono? (What’s your phone number?)
When asked why a 40-year-old is going to school
Soy alérgico trajabo. (I am allergic to work.)
At the beach
¿Cuántos años tienetu hermana? (How old is your sister?)
Enjoying the local culture with your new friend
Me gusta ir de bar en bar. (I like pub crawls.)
In the bar
Le invito a una copa. (I’ll buy you a drink.)
¡Salud! (Cheers!)
Otra de lo mismo. (Same again, please.)
After the bar
Estoy enfermo. (I’m sick.)
He estado vomitando. (I’ve been vomiting.)
Trying to e-mail someone back home for sympathy
¿Dónde hay un cibercafé cercano? (Where is the local internet café?)
Discovering it’s running Windows Vista
Se ha quedado colgado. (It’s crashed.)
Trying to get through customs to board your plane
Tengo receta para esta droga. (I have a prescription for this drug.)

I love you. Good night.

Last week my son and I flew to his grandparents in Kelowna.

Alex is four and loves flying almost as much as he loves Grandma and Grandpa.

The whole deal took a couple of hours and, thank to UBC Okanagan's deal with North South Travel, less than a couple hundred dollars.

I got home, did some homework and went to a three hour Investigative Journalism class.

I couldn't wait for my wife to get home.

When she did, we decided to enjoy our new-found freedom with a spontaneous decision--a nice dinner out.

Two hours and five courses later, we were back home to an empty house.

Don't get me wrong, I love my son, but the lack of responsibility and complete sense of freedom brought back memories of those heady days as DINKs.

It was 9 p.m.

My wife and I looked at each other.

She spoke first: "Remember what we used to do before we had Alex?" she asked with a gleam in her eyes.

We raced to the bedroom as fast as we could and dove into bed.

She was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow and I followed suit a few minutes later.

My son, the biker

I took the training wheels of Alex's bike today.

Seven minutes later he was crying.
It's not like he's a crier and it's not as though I didn't read everything Bicycling magazine wrote about training wheel removal.

Still, he tried, he crashed, he crashed again, and again and three more times and then went storming into
house sobbing that he'll "never be able to ride like Liam."
(Liam is his best friend and has been riding without training wheels for at least a week.)

It started well.

I followed the advice of Bicycling magazine, removed his training wheels, took him to the top of a small
grass-covered hill and let him coast down.

He did perfectly, but when he stopped, he kept his feet on the pedals and fell over.

The second time down the hill, he did the same thing. Even fell over on the same side.

I consulted Bicycling, put a hockey stick between his bike's seat stay arch and the bottom bracket and tried to keep his bike upright by using the stick as a lever.

It worked, until Alex noticed and started complaining that Liam didn't use a
stick.

I took it off and Alex promptly fell over, getting all tangled around the frame in the process.

Bicycling magazine called it a "flesh pretzel."

His last crash was the worst.

We went back to the top of the hill. I made sure the hockey stick was removed, told him to keep his feet off the pedals and tightened his helmet.

I gave him a push and he did awesome. He coasted down the hill, across the sidewalk and right into the neighbour's wooden fence.

I consulted Bicycling but there was nothing about removing splinters from a crying preschooler.

Move Over Art Linkletter

Art Linkletter made a career from quoting kids on his show Kids Say the Darndest Things.
I figure I'll test the waters and see how easy it is. Feedback encouraged.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Alex, go to the bathroom."
"I did."
"Did you pee?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"There was no pee, just a fart."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Daddy, can I have a peanut butter sandwich, but without peanuts?"
To some people this makes no sense, but we have two types of peanut butter in our house--crunchy and extra creamy.
Guess which kind he prefers?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Grandpa, what's that?"
"That's a rooster."
"No, on his neck."
"That's a wattle. All roosters have one."
"Oh. Why does Grandma Pam have one?"
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The very first time Alex asked me where he came from, I told him that mommy and I picked up the parts from a store and assembled him at home.
One day when he was three, he had a nosebleed.
When it finally stopped, he said: "We have to go back to the store and get a nose that doesn't leak."

That sounds disgusting

When my wife became a nurse practitioner, she went out and bought the most obnoxious sounding alarm clock she could find.

She needed a high-decibel clock to wake her for those 7 a.m. consults, but she still managed to sleep through it a few times.

(I think women are gifted with the ability to turn their hearing off, a skill that allows them to stay married to husbands who, allegedly, "snore like a congested heifer.")

Anyhoo, after much research, I have found the perfect sound for the world's most effective alarm clock sound and I'm willing to share it with anyone who wants to use it.

I guarantee it will wake the sleepiest person and have then out of bed and running in less than a second.

The sound, of course, is that of a child barfing his brains out.

All over his bed.

After having two helpings of peas, carrots and chicken (which, it seems, he needs to chew more).

If this posting does not make much sense, I apologize--I'm sleep deprived.

It seems, that after a 3 a.m. wake-up call from the barf alarm, I didn't get any more sleep and spent the next three hours doing laundry, rubbing a little person's back and telling him "no, I'm not mad at all that Junior also threw up on mommy and daddy's bed."

And I made sure Lisa didn't sleep though her alarm.

Mexican sun vs. Canadian son

Is it wrong to leave my son in Canada while I head to the Mexican Riviera for "research"?

It was easy to convince Alex that Canada was the better option for him, but I'm having trouble convincing myself.

If my son stays in the Great White North he'll spend a week with his grandparents (whom he seldom sees) in the Kootenays (lots of snow, which he loves) playing with other kids his age (tons of fun).

Conversely, I tell myself, that wandering around a bunch of Mayan ruins in the scorching heat while mommy tries to explain the difference between Tenochtitlan and Teotihuacán would be boring to a four-year-old (or, to be honest, a 40-year-old).

The grandparents hometown has deer, a wave pool, enough toys to start a Toys R Us and a grandma who can make 349 different types of cookies.

Mexico has spiders and snakes, a semi-polluted Gulf of Mexico, toys that meet no known safety standards and 349 different types of hot sauce.

It seems straightforward enough, yet I was still wracked with guilt.

Like most men, I didn't want to discuss something as sensitive as childrearing with my wife.

Instead I asked the guys during the Super Bowl.

Sure enough my guilt was assuaged.

"Dude," said Alan. "Didn't Foreign Affairs issue a travel advisory for Mexico. You sure don’t want to bring in a kid to that."

"Yeah," said Bosko. "And diarrhea kills more people every year than AIDS and cancer combined. And everyone knows Mexico is famous for Montezuma's Revenge."

"True," added Jay. "And do you really want to spend $1,200 so you can spend six hours on a plane with a four-year-old?"

Thanks guys, I'm now guilt free.

Paranoid

Are you paranoid if they are really out to get you?


Alex is only four, but last week I was pretty sure the age of innocence was over.

My sweet bright-eyed son had been called to the principal’s office.

Well, actually, not the principal's office, as Pooh's Corner Daycare doesn't have a principal.

But they do have a trio of BCDCS Level II Early Childhood Cognitive Development Co-ordinators (or something like that), which sounds even scarier.

So anyway, when I went to pick up my rosy-cheeked son the other day, I was told to be at the school the following Thursday "to discuss Alex."

It was as though my family doctor just told me to come in as soon as possible to discuss my prostate--even best case scenario, you know it's going to be awkward and uncomfortable and might even hurt.

When I arrived at the Pooh's Corner I was greeted by a woman I had never met before who was armed with a huge stack of papers.

Alex's three BCDCS II ECCDC's (from here on they will be called babysitters) were seated behind.

"So, what's up?" I asked, with the same apprehension I use when I talk to cops who have just pulled me over for speeding.

"Nothing," said the briefcase lady who, it turns out, was just a really nice public health nurse.

"We just like to touch bases with parents once a year to see if they have any questions or
concerns about their child or the program."

And that was it--no panic, not trouble, just a regular old meeting.

It turns out Alex is completely normal and actually well behaved.