A Bilingual Man

In fairness... the MacAllen boys have between them all of the makings of a bilingual man. Already nearly fluent in English after an exclusive twenty some odd year regiment study, we've invested ourselves beyond. Enter... spanish! After our gruelling, disciplined month of study, we have enough spanish between us to order a meal at a restaurant, or even ask (even beg... especially in Micahs case) for directions to the toilet. The regiment includes four hours a day of intensive spanish training, followed by about sixteen hours of good intentions, lightly peppered with "ola"s, and "buenos dias/noches/tardes" spoken at likely the wrong hours. For instance apparently when stumbling home from a festival at 3 AM, it is appropriate to say "good day" rather than "good night" even when its quite clear that neither party has been doing much sleeping. But, all knowledge combined, I'd say we have one bilingual man between us.

Which is good. As from here on, our ability to travel, and likely even survive is entirely dependant on our ability to communicate with people. Pardon my french, but... Shit! (That is my french and not spanish, entirely because my teacher was a lovely woman who isn't likely to even have the vocabulary that us Americans are entirely dependant upon.)

Honestly however, I think my Spanish is up to the level I'd hoped it would be after a month. My original plan was to speak only spanish in the school, and work studiously and intently in class. Instead, I practiced almost exclusively my near fluent English (certainly its best to get the one right before tempting fate with another), and devoted at least half of my class time to flirting with my teacher. I figured it was the only chance of an "A". Hey, it's worked before! Amazingly, I made it to a level where I'll be comfortable in foreign lands. You see, I drastically underestimated my ability to absorb other languages, but radically overestimated my ability to maintain a disciplined course of study.

Well, long story short... school is out for summer. We-ve invited our teachers out to dinner at a nice restaurant Monday. We'll have to say our tearful goodbyes then. Tuesday we leave early for Tikal. As for last day of class, we eased the pain the only way college taught us...





With drunkedness, foolishness and mucho, mucho de baillando!!!