If Mr. Clean were allowed to age he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d look like Jock. Tall, shaved head with broad shoulders, but a golf pro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s weathered face and legs that bow out – the result of long ago football injuries. At fifty-three, Jock wed Amelia, a native of Chile, and though he knew some Spanish from his own dogged pursuits, it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t until he brought her to his home in Boxborough that he resolved to learn more. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It just wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be fair to her.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Often when I talk to his wife, Jock translates.<\/p>\n
Yesterday it was time to work on his deck, and as I walked past his open slider I heard, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Work, I love work. I can watch it all day long. I think I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll bring my chair out here so I can watch your skinny ass slaving away.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Yeah, the funny thing was not so much that he noticed my skinny ass, but that he said something about it.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153While you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re watching me work, tell he how you learned to speak Spanish long after your brain had fossilized. My son\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in Nicaragua (I tell everyone about Matt and Hil), and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s studying Spanish four hours every morning. He, I understand, but you…?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I picked up a thirty year old Spanish vocabulary book and I married it. Conjugated the verbs, completed the lessons and so on. But you know what helped me most? I stopped being afraid of making mistakes. They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care if you make mistakes, they enjoy it, it shows you are trying.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know who the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153they\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is he was referring to. Maybe all the Spanish speakers in the world, or more likely, Amelia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s friends and family.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care how much you study. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not willing to practice it, you won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be any good. When I made a mistake that I was aware of, or couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think of the right word, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d say, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a little bit embarazado. I made many mistakes, I repeated it often, A little bit embarazado\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. Do you know what embarazado means?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Wanting to impress him with my own grasp of a foreign language, I paused for a moment and replied, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sure, it means embarrassed.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153 No, it means pregnant. I kept repeating, ‘ I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a little bit pregnant.’ \u00e2\u20ac\u0153<\/p>\n
As planned, we called Matt at 6 Pm to sing Happy Birthday, but no one answered. We checked the country code and dialed again, but no answer. We thought it terribly unlikely that out of a family of ten (eleven with Matthew), that the house would be empty. This time Diane found Egdelina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s original email and compared it to the phone number on her typed piece of paper. It matched, we dialed again, no answer. We were about to give up when the phone rang. It was Matthew calling from his cybercafe, four blocks from his house.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Matt we tried to call but the phone just rang and rang.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I know. I was home, but the phone is in a room and when they are not home they lock the door. I could hear it ring, but I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t answer it. It broke my heart.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
At 5:20 this morning, Matt and Hil boarded a bus that will take them on this road <\/a>to Miraflor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If Mr. Clean were allowed to age he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d look like Jock. Tall, shaved head with broad shoulders, but a golf pro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s weathered face and legs that bow out – the result of long ago football injuries. At fifty-three, Jock wed … Continue reading
![road <\/a>to Miraflor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If Mr. Clean were allowed to age he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d look like Jock. Tall, shaved head with broad shoulders, but a golf pro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s weathered face and legs that bow out – the result of long ago football injuries. At fifty-three, Jock wed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/www.travelsongs.com\/albums\/esteli\/IMG_0130.sized.jpg\"){kind=link}