one semester of spanish love song

I just wanted to share this video of how to use minimal Spanish to woo your love. One of my fellow teachers showed this to me my last year of teaching, and I thought it was hilarious... and so true. My kids loved it too.

Thanks, Amy T., for reminding me. I needed a laugh. Good memories. :)

(And I'm kind of posting back to back here, so make sure you don't miss Jonah's 15 month post.)

spanish - lesson two

UPDATE: I just killed a fly with my bare-hand. That's right, my bare hand. And not just any hand... my LEFT hand. My non-dominant hand. Mr. Miyagi would be so proud. (And PETA would be ticked... but that's a whole other post.)
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Ok, here are the answers to your Spanish questions. None of this stuff goes together in the least, but I'll try to do better next time. I haven't had time today to even touch the computer or think about a blog post until now.

Where is the bathroom? - ¿Dónde está el baño?
(Pronounced: Doan-day es-tah el bahn-yo?)

** Whenever I type "ah", I'm indicating the "a" sound as in the word "father." And I have no clue how to really type these sounds out correctly. I took a Spanish phonetics class in college, and did rather well actually, but have NO IDEA how to do it anymore. I'm sure phoneticists - if that's what they're even called - and kindergarten teachers round the world are cringing. **

Somebody asked how to pronounce "flauta" (flute)... Ugh. I wish I could just say it for you... The closest I can get to typing the sound would be "flowtah," but it's not like flow, it's like the "flow" part of flower. The "au" in Spanish is close to the "ow" sound we say when we get hurt.

How do you say "I love you"?
The most common way to say "I love you" is "Te quiero."
Pronounced: tay key-err-oh

Another way is "Te amo."
Pronounced: tay ah-moe
But this one is reserved for very intimate loves, such as your significant other or your love for God... or at least that's my understanding. (Feel free to chime in, mis hispanohablantes, if you know/use it differently.)

How do you make the accent marks on the computer?
You can see all the ALT codes here, but these are completely useless to me, seeing as how I can't even remember what day of the week or even month of the year it is. The way I typically do it is in Microsoft Word, click Ctrl + ' + the vowel. Then I just copy and paste from Word to the Internet. I don't know how to do the tilde over the n that way. For that one (and for the capital letters, upside down exclamation and question mark) I do Insert, Symbol, change it to Latin-1, and you can find all the symbols you need. On second thought, maybe using the ALT codes is easier, but considering I write my address wrong half the time, I should probably just stay away from having to remember lots of numbers.

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Jonah update:

Jonah is eating much more these last few days (27 ounces the day before yesterday, 29 ounces yesterday, about 26 today), but he's also been throwing up A LOT more, so I don't know if the increased ounces are really doing a whole lot of good. Despite his eating inconsistencies and the massive spit-ups, though, he continues to gain about a half a pound most weeks.

Praise God!

His newest thing is constantly rubbing his feet together, which may be normal in baby development, but is bad for us. You can imagine the state of his feet and toes right now because of this new hobby. Not. Good. His right foot is especially bad. That was also the leg that had the huge calf blister, but thanks to an EB mommy (Thanks, Katie!) we kept Desitin (the original) on it, and by the time the skin sloughed off, the skin underneath was already mostly healed - not raw AT ALL!

Praise God!

He is at a really fun age right now, learning new things every day. Today he kept sticking his tongue in and out, in and out, over and over again, and even tried to click his tongue once or twice. He's really interested in that one and just stares and stares if you do it, trying to figure it out. So cute. We've figured out that his laugh is less of a true laugh, and more of a huge smile followed by a really high-pitched squeal. It's really adorable, but something tells me he's going to be an extremely loud three year old.

Praise God!

Anyway, today was much better than yesterday (which was good because I was on the verge of insanity by the time the day was over). God gave me exactly what I needed today: Matt's mom's help with dressing change and household chores (Thanks, Debbie!), for Jonah to take a three hour nap (most days he's only sleeping about an hour in the afternoons), and for no Niagara Falls gushers (he's not in bed yet, so knock on wood or don't count your chickens or don't talk about the no-hitter or... well, you get the idea.)

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Please be in prayer for Shaina tonight. Tomorrow is her first day of high school. I'm excited but extremely nervous for her, so I can just imagine how she feels.

Buena suerte, Shaina. Que Dios vaya contigo. (Look it up, kiddo, Spanish starts tomorrow!)

spanish - lesson one

Today has been a little better. Jonah took about 26 ounces, although it was more like 22 after a huge Niagra Falls tonight. We had to redress his chest piece and both arms. And now, he's smelly. He'll be the smelly kid at church. Sigh. That's the worst part of the huge throw-ups to me - not the redressing (although that's pretty crappy), but it's the fact that I can't just go throw him in the tub and get him smelling all "baby smell" again. He's either smelling like Aquaphor or drainage or spit-up most of the time. But so it goes. And it's so funny how even if it's not the greatest smell, it's still the Jonah smell, and that makes it wonderful...

But enough about all that.

Grandaddy was doing a little better today last I heard, but I didn't get a chance to call Matt's mom tonight like I wanted. I went to the grocery store while Matt and his dad looked after Jonah, and when I got home it was pretty much non-stop from then until now. But thank you so much for your prayers. We hope he'll snap out of all this, but it's just hard to know. He is off pain meds (besides Tylenol) now, so hopefully he'll continue to improve. He'll move into the nursing home on Monday. Hopefully his time there will be short-lived.

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So I've decided to teach you guys Spanish. I miss teaching (I can't believe I just said that), and I need to teach something to someone, so guess what? You're IT. Deal with it. (Yes, that's how I talked to my high schoolers.)

Lesson 1 -

Hola is pronounced O-lah, not Holla as some are accustomed to saying.
As in, "Hola, Amigo." Not as in, "Holla at your girl."

To say "My name is," you say, "Me llamo (pronounced: may yah-moe) ___________."
Not: Me llamo es ________________
"Me llamo" literally translates "I call myself" or "I am called," so if you say, "Me llamo es Susan," you've just said "I am called Is Susan." First name: Is; Last name: Susan.

Take this video clip, for example.



And lastly (but certainly not leastly), the restaurant Chipotle.

Being from the south, I understand that there are certain accents and linguistic tendencies that make this a tricky word, but if I might, I would love to tell you the correct way to pronounce this restaurant (which coincidentally has the best burrito bowl around... crazy that they are owned by McDonald's).

Chipotle is NOT pronounced Chee-poe-tuhl.

Chipotle is NOT pronounced Chi-pole-tee.

Chipotle is NOT pronounced Chi-pot-lee.

It is pronounced Chee-pote-lay.

So there you have it, folks. You can say Hello, My name is, and can pronounce Chipotle correctly... pretty much THE three most important things in the Spanish language.

Now don't you just feel accomplished? You got to learn. I got to teach. Now we should all be able to sleep just a little more soundly, dontcha think?

Let me know if there's something you'd like to learn (Spanish-wise that is... don't ask me about geography or geometry or well, pretty much any other subject. High school was a long time ago, and I've forgotten most of the useless crap very important, relevant, and necessary information that was imparted to me there. But Spanish - ahhh, sweet Spanish. Spanish I know.)

Buenas noches estudiantes míos. Que duerman bien.