The Bank

It’s raining here again, and mom says it’s supposed to continue for another two weeks, complete with hail. Lovely. At least I won’t have to worry about making my sunburn any worse. It’s been quiet this week, probably because it’s the first week of classes. The new section of level 5 that Marie and I are in is going fine. The group isn’t as diverse (five of us from the US and two guys from China), but I can’t really complain. We’ve started reading a novella called El Túnel, which I hope turns out to be interesting.

Since I don’t have a whole lot to report in terms of events, I’ll put up another installment of my random notes on life. I’ve been keeping a list of the most amusing mistakes I’ve made, although I’m not keeping up with it as much as I’d like. For your own amusement, because being a tourist can be hilarious business sometimes, here are some of my favorite oopses.

“No recuerdo mí nombre.” This means “I don’t remember my name,” and was said to our program director María Isabel. I was trying to tell her I didn’t remember my phone number.

“Cuando era niño…” Means “When I was a little boy.” You can guess what I was trying to say; I made that mistake to my mom and her maid, and Meri hasn’t let me live it down yet.

“¿Quiero que me la lleva?” I was trying to help out mom by offering to carry a basket in from the car so she didn’t have to. I meant to say, “Do you want me to carry that?” but what came out was, “I want it to carry me?” She didn’t bother to point out what I’d said, but I figured it out myself about thirty seconds after the fact, by which point I already had the basket in the house and it didn’t matter anymore.

I asked Meri last week if she liked meeting all the exchange students who cycle through this house, and she said yes – because they make funny mistakes. Apparently she gets her kicks out of hearing us butcher the Spanish language, which I thought was pretty damn funny myself. I’m sure she’ll get her share of laughs off of me before I leave.

~Later same day~
I had to go to the bank today to cash some travelers’ checks, to pay for the obscene fine the visa office is going to levy on me tomorrow. That was a project in itself that left me in a rather sour mood. I went to the window and was told to see the lady at the desk. I sat for an hour waiting for the lady at the desk to be available, and when she finally got to me, she told me to see the gerente. It was only a five-minute wait for the gerente, who scribbled something on each of my checks and sent me back to desk-lady.

Desk-lady spent half an hour filling out paperwork, and then told me she needed my passport. I keep it locked at the house for safety, but she wouldn’t do anything without it, so I went home. It was half an hour to get home, and I grabbed my passport and went out again. Walking back to the Ecovía, a car drove through a puddle on the edge of the sidewalk and doused me in several gallons of water. So I showed up back at the bank another half hour later, soaking wet this time.

I returned to desk-lady, who spent another fifteen minutes filling out paperwork, and then handed me everything and told me to go to the window. I don’t think the guy at the window had ever seen a travelers’ check before, and he too spent a while shuffling papers. Then he handed me a paper and told me he needed authorization from desk-lady. Back to desk-lady, authorization scribbled on paper, return to window-guy. Window-guy shuffles more papers, hands me a receipt, disappears. He returns, gives me my cash, then calls over desk-lady. The two of them confer, type, shuffle papers, and finally send me away. By that time I’ve spent about two and a half hours on the whole project, and I’m starting to feel like a cat that’s had a bath: soaking wet and pissed off. I am never going to travel with travelers’ checks again; they are a terrible idea, invented solely for the amusement of natives to laugh at frustrated foreigners.