13

Quito, Ecuador.

Sunday, October 31, 2004:

"Where did you eat lunch yesterday?" asked Narda in Spanish. She looked at me expectantly from across our table on the rooftop terrace of the Secret Garden hostal, where we have been holding one-on-one sessions ranging from four to six hours in length for approximately five days each week.

"I eat myself at Chinese restaurant for lunch," I replied.

Narda stared at me for a moment, then flinched painfully and jammed a clenched fist in her mouth to illustrate what I had just done figuratively with my foot. She shook her head and corrected me with a slightly less cannibalistic formulation. I grinned dumbly and repeated, swallowing the urge to inform her that I was delicious, though overly salty.

...

After checking into the Secret Garden from my old digs in the New Town some two weeks ago, I discovered that private classes with experienced tutors could be arranged on the hostel´s roof at excellent rates. Eager to begin my studies as quickly as possible, and possessed of a laziness exceeding that same eagerness, I found the prospect of my teacher coming to my doorstep an impossible one to pass up. And so, at 3:30 on a Tuesday afternoon, only several hours after paying my tuition, Narda met me on the roof for what was to be the first session in a total of forty-six hours of class over the course of the following two weeks.

It wasn´t easy. I remembered just enough Spanish from the four years I had in middle- and high-school to mangle the language in ways rank beginners can only dream of. An 800-word recollection of vocabulary coupled with not the slightest recollection of the most basic rules of grammar is a dangerous thing. Just look at our President. ¿Como se dice "Invade Iraq"? I´m working on it, rest most assured.

"What did you like to do when you were a child?" asked Narda during our second session.

"When I was a little girl..." I began, managing to garble the masculine "niño" into the feminine "niña."

"Niño!" Narda interjected.

"It was an interesting childhood," I shot back. "You weren´t there. You can´t prove anything."

Poor Narda. I make no efforts to be graceful in my ignorance. While I am what you would call "respectful," and while I defer to her corrections as I obviously should, I am probably more concerned in learning sarcastic phrases and bad words than anything else. This does not go unnoticed.

"You are a quick learner today," said Narda one day, after defering to my baser appetite for knowledge and teaching me a slew of naughty Ecuadorian hand gestures and my new favorite word, "Chuchaqui" (the Ecuadorian word for hangover, pronounced like "chew-chalk-ee"; should you ever hear the phrase "I´m Chuchaqui like Chicken Souvlaki," which I expect to go global shortly, please give credit where credit is due, namely with 5 rum-shots, 6 cuba libres and 26 hours without sleep).

We were walking down the streets of old colonial Quito. Apart from teaching Spanish, Narda is a trained guide with a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of Ecuador and its history. She was pointing out 300-year old mansions and theatres. I was practicing dirty hand signals, much to her consternation.

"Stop it," she said, "or somebody will see you." I just grinned like a moron and went on forming my fist into a shape very much resembling the one burnt-out Kiss fans give, with pinkie and forefinger raised and the middle two bent, but with palm facing inward, rather than outward. The favorite gesture of distruntled drivers, the esteemed middle finger of Ecuador, these "devil´s horns" essentially signify the message: "Your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend is playing dirty dirty snugglebunnies with your best friend/sister/brother/me/a billie goat." How very charming.

"It is only for when you are driving!" she added.

"When can we rent a car?" I asked, my thirst for learning unquenchable.

In the end, Narda wound up asking me about common American hand gestures and so for a time, in the shadows of Volcan Pichincha, in the hectic bustle of a crowded Latin American city at noon, the student became teacher and the teacher came one step closer to a successful career as a New York City cabbie. A finer cultural exchange there could not have been.

...

This Sunday, the day of our second-to-last class, Narda took me on a six-hour excursion to "Mitad del Mundo," the Middle of the World. This is the overly-dramatic term bequeathed upon the location where a number of museums and monuments are erected to mark the Equator, some 15 miles north of Quito. With an excrutiatingly kitschy touristic reputation, I had no desire to go to this place, but, when Narda offered me the option, it seemed better than the given alternative of six hours sitting in a chair reviewing the difference between the Past Indefinite tense and the Past Imperfect tense.

"Iremos," I told Narda. We will go.

During the bus ride up, Narda and I conversed about odds and ends in Spanish. "There aren´t many American visitors in Quito," Narda once remarked.

"They´ve sent me to represent them," I said.

"Poor United States."

At Mitad del Mundo, marked by a narrow line of red paint, we watched a demonstration of the Corialus Effect as a man drained a sink of water on, north and south of the Equatorial line. The water spins in one direction just to the north, the other direction just to the south, and shoots straight down at 00´00 latitude. Think of your toilet flushing. Watching this was every bit as exciting.

Narda made me listen to the man´s explanation in Spanish, but it was largely drowned out by the near-simultaneous Japanese translation being rendered by the guide of some 15 photo-snapping Japanese. Not that you needed to hear what he saying to understand what was going on.

The man then went on to balance an egg on the head of a nail, to demonstrate the weakened state of gravity on the line. When he was done, he offered to let anybody watching try their hand. Successful practitioners receive their very own certificate confirming their valuable egg-balancing skills.

Narda looked over at me. "Do you want to try to balance an egg---"

"No," I said. "Nuh uh."

"You can be famous," she said, "like millions of other tourists..."

I passed. Narda then asked if I wanted a picture of myself on the Equator. Again, I passed.

Then we came to a pen full of llamas. I like llamas. I have always felt that any joke can be made funny by the skilled insertion of a llama or two.

"I want a picture," I said, "of you and the llamas."

Narda strode up to the llamas. At the time she was approaching the pen, the llamas were casually grazing in a position that offered length-wise profiles to the camera. However, when she turned her back to the llamas to face me, the llamas turned their backs to Narda´s.

"This is my favorite photo of the trip," I said, showing Narda the picture of her smilingly standing just to the left of two thrust-out llama asses.

I then learned the Spanish phrase for "delete that!" delivered in the commanding imperative voice. But I didn´t, of course.

In the end, after struggling through another two kitschy, insipid hours, Narda commended me on my progress on becoming thoroughly obnoxious in a foreign tongue in the course of only two weeks.

This is an accomplishment I consider on par with achieving fluency.