Sometimes English is Hard (vol. 1)

Sometimes English is hard and does strange things. Here's what can happen if you're not careful:

An ice cream place advertising Banana Splings.

Coma-Coca, the drink of choice at this coastal restaurant. We're not sure if this is an attempt to be clever (in Spanish it means "eat cocaine") or if someone was just very confused...

We didn't eat at this restaurant.

Here's a little help with the last one:

Pescado Frito - fried fish - Correct!
Pescado Apanado - prepared fish - More correct would be "breaded fish"
Pescado al Ajillo - fish with garlic - Yay! (ps THIS IS DELICIOUS!)
Pescado a la Plancha - fish to the iron - Haha no. Grilled fish.
Pescado al Vapor - sweater fish. fish sweater? - Teehee! Steamed fish. We saw "sweaty fish" at another restaurant. We stayed away from that one, as well.

These photos all came from our trip to Puerto Lopez. The food there is fantastic (and I'm sure even the sweater fish is good). I especially recommend anything encocado--with coconut sauce!

I just hope that my flubs in Spanish can bring someone such entertainment. I can't compete with our friend Rich--he told us, "Me duele la pechuga," which means, "My chicken breast hurts."

What's your favorite language blooper?

..kirstie..

This post is part of the Language and Culture series.

English Club 2012-2013

Peace Corps volunteers often talk about "primary" projects and "secondary" projects. Since we're in the Natural Resources Conservation program here in Ecuador, our primary projects focus on the environment and conservation, like our dry toilets project. Secondary projects include activities that Peace Corps volunteers are involved in that don't fit into the main focus of their program. Like many volunteers, we've had a lot of requests for English classes, tutoring, clubs, homework help, and how to otherwise magically transport knowledge of the English language into one's brain.

Helping community members learn English is a great way to become integrated into the community, especially when you've first been plopped into it after training. Unfortunately, most people, after those first few meetings, get tired, freak out, or (for whatever reason) give up--because learning a new language is HARD.

But that's why I put so much effort into my English club.

Practicing pronunciation.

Project: Conociendo la Naturaleza en Inglés

We'd like to introduce our first Peace Corps project blog! Our project blogs will showcase a project that we have completed in our community as a part of our Peace Corps service.


Vacation Course: Conociendo la Naturaleza en Inglés

This project, which translates as "Learning about Nature through English," was a suggestion by one of our community counterparts. He originally asked for an English course for the high school students to attend during their two-month vacation from school, but our project area is Natural Resources Conservation (NRC). So we decided to teach both English and environmental education.

New Blog Features, Old Blog Rules

Hi Friends!

We have two new blog-related pieces of news for you. First, we now have a comment box! As you can see (you might have to scroll down a little), there is a comment box in the right sidebar. Please use this to ask us any questions you might have that you'd like to see us answer in a future blog post!

Second, Kirstie has a new blog called Girl Parts. (Yes, that is the name.) She created this to be able to share some of the woman-related things she's been learning and thinking about that not everyone who reads this blog maybe wants to read. Both female people and male people are welcome to check it out--just don't go if you don't want to stumble across something about "that time of the month," etc.

We also want to mention that thoughtful comments and questions are ALWAYS welcome here on our blog. We did get our first spammy comment though--all spam, flames, and trolls will be deleted! And here is a primer on what these words mean:

Spam - fake comments with links that usually give your computer horrible viruses if you click on them (like spam in email). Also, a questionably-food meat product made in Minnesota that Hawaiians love.

Flame - mean things, either against us, the blog, other commentors, or anyone else connected or not connected to the blog. However, if your name is Calcifer and you're a fire demon, you may say whatever you like because you are awesome.

Troll - usually off-topic comments (sometimes in the form of flames) that are intended to push readers to an emotional response. For example, in a blog about cute, fuzzy kittens, one might write that three-toed unicorns are highly superior to the cutest, most powerful kittens--all in an attempt to create feelings of angst, fear, grief, anger, etc. in the other users of that site. Of course, this is also a troll (and this is an amautalik by the same artist).

[Edit Sept. 2012 - We will also delete all swearing/cussing. This is a family-friendly blog.]

The last half of this post was mostly just to make you smile... We love your comments, love that you're reading our blog and thinking about us, and love that we have so much that we can share with you!

..Kirstie and Isaac..