Wednesday, October 17, 2007

A Mexican vacation


Here is the thing about Americans traveling in Cancun. The bar is really low for impressing the locals with your Spanish. Basically you can say "Hola, como esta" "Muy bien" and "Gracias" and they're like "Oh thank god. Someone who isn't trying to get my attention by screaming Over here, Amigo."* I know something like 20 Spanish words (trust me, I'm not proud of this) and I had a good handful of people tell me that I spoke the language well. And I'm pretty sure that all this means is that I tried to say a few words correctly and I did it at a normal decibel level. Or maybe they were just really, really polite people, which is entirely possible. Also some, but not all of them, may have been flattering me for tips. Which totally works on me. Whatever! They were compliments.
All-inclusive resorts are not really my thing, since you end up spending all day every day in the same place eating the same food. But the people at the resort were exceedingly friendly, we had a good time with Rob's family and the weather was far better than we were expecting--it rained for less than an hour each day, nothing even close to the torrential downpours and possible hurricanes that the "meteorologists" had predicted.
On the last day we were there, the group headed out on a deep-sea fishing excursion, minus me, since I didn't think it would be very appropriate to throw up on John for his birthday. I stayed at the resort and practiced saying "Una margarita, por favor" "Gracias" and "Uno mas." The waitress gave me enormous smiles and complimented my excellent Spanish.

*Yes, this happened. Yes, it was someone in our group. Yes, repeatedly.

1 comment:

Joe Cog said...

Didn't know what to expect from your link to "throw up," but, of course. Did the group keep requesting "Guantanamera" too.