you're in Mexico; speak Mexican

Felix comes by with his ironwood carvings. He knows I want some as gifts (los regalos). Besides, today he needs 450 pesos for the electricity.

I pick up a hummingbird. "Chuparosa" he says. This must be a Mexican word because I can't find it in my spanish dictionary (so the spelling is a guess).

I pick up a road runner. I can't grasp what Felix calls it and the next time I see him, I'll ask him again because that, too, is not in my dictionary. This time I'll write it down.

I bring out a bag of grapes as a gift. "How do you say that in ingles?" he asks. I say: "grayp". He has a difficult time with this word. "In espanol", he says "uva" and I think "great, another word that sounds likes eggs and thursday".

At stores, shopkeepers will say the price in spanish, and I'll repeat; then often they will attempt an english pronunciation and I'll help them. Back and forth, we trade words. People are hungry to learn my language. They hope for more tourists from the north and because most tourists from the north are reluctant to learn their language, they need to know the tourists' language. It is their bread and butter, tortilla y queso.

Yesterday at the Pemex, the woman filling my tank asked if I wanted "magna" or "premium". Why I had a hard time saying "magna" I'll never know but I did so she suggested that I ask for "verde o roja". Mucho gracias, I respond.

I remember this: My friend who is a bartender reprimanded a Hispanic man for asking for an ashtray in spanish. She said "You're in America; speak english." When she relayed this story to her daughter and I, we both reprimanded her. "You don't know," I said, "he might have been a tourist."

The next time my bartender friend and I visited the border town and we sat at an outdoor cafe and she asked for an ashtray, I said "you're in Mexico; you should've asked for that in spanish."

In the three months that I have been here, no one has been rude to me. No one has made me feel less than human because I don't speak their language. No one laughs because it is impossible for me to roll my r's.

Jose at the ice plant says, "you have to ask for a bag of ice this way: una bolsa con hielo" and as I carry the ice home, I say "una bolsa con hielo" to myself over and over because learning a new language is difficult, especially at this age. The next day I go to the restaurant and ask for a glass of ice "una vaso con hielo". To my ears "bolsa and vaso" sound a lot alike. I wish the Mexican "v" wasn't pronounced as a "b", it would make my life so much easier.

Felix says: "Every day I will help you with espanol and you help me with ingles, okay?"

I say: "Mucho gracias. Hasta manana."

Felix says: "Say it in ingles."