EPTA Failure to Communicate
I help put on a film night. We call this film night, International Film Night (IFN for short). So far, we have put IFN on one time; it used to be a tradition at my school that was funded by a wealthy investor, unfortunately it ended abruptly a couple years back. Knowing this, we decided that for our IB project, putting IFN on would be a great idea. I was one of the original members of the group, and as part of that original group of interested people, I work the all important food department. IFN normally is a showing of another culture's food and cinema, the last one (the only one so far) was India; that one went swimmingly other than having to speak my third language to a Mexican immigrant who could not get across his thoughts in English.
With that background, here is my rant
I can't explain how bad the language barrier between myself and Mexican immigrants is. I fucking speak rudimentary spanish at a mediocre level. I had to skip two years of Spanish at my school to make it to IB Spanish SL (I had taken Hebrew at my old school for 8 years), so I will admit that my Spanish is lackluster. I'm not fluent, like my latina girlfriend, and though I tend to pick up languages quickly, that has not been the case with Spanish. Since I came from learning two different ancient semitic languages in ancient Hebrew + Aramaic, and Modern Hebrew, learning a Romance is a change. I've spent the last 4 years studying Spanish and I'll freely admit that I'm no pro, still I feel that 4 years of Spanish, with the latter two being higher level Spanish, should make me somewhat intelligeble to Spanish speakers. Apparently not.
The first incident occured when I was trying to get food for this months IFN, inapropriately called La Noche de Hispana because it features Mexican food and a Spanish movie while glossing over every other Hispanic country, when I was trying to get a caterer for the event. First I contacted one of my previous Spanish teachers, she told me about her friends sister who was a caterer. She told me to get Paella from this lady that we will call Mrs. C (for caterer). This ended up not going as planned. I spent an entire month in back and forth, trying to contact this lady. I sent emails,called twice on the same day, contacted who I believed to be her husband, and I even tried to have her sister talk to her. I got nada from it. Later, a teacher who has never taught me, but has the reputation for a nice guy while still being a screw up when it comes to getting things done in and out of the class room, told me that he had contacted the lady. Apparently he contacted her sister, the Spanish Teacher's friend, telling her that I was trying to contact HER and not her sister. It was just an all around failure that wasted a month of my time.
The second incident was after the Teacher's friend felt bad for me. She told me that she had a lady I could talk to. This lady, she warned me, could not speak english, and even more importantly, she needed the money. I should have known from the beginning that this would end poorly. An illegal immigrant, making tamales out of her oven for large parties of people, who wanted a buck per tamale; that doesn't exactly scream legit now does it. Granted these tamales must have been authentic to the bone. So of course I needed to order the food with the date of the IFN coming steadily, I called this lady that night. This went horribly. The call went something like this, (Sorry, I don't have accent marks enabled on my windows side of my mac)
Me: "Hey, is this the Garcia residence?"
Her: "No, Que."
Me: "Esto es la residencia de los Garcias?"
Her "Si, esto es."
Me: "Es possible que hablas con me sobre los tamales"
Her: "Que"
Me: "Los tamales, sra."
Her boy friend now starts loudly screaming in the background. Shit goes downhill, fast. He starts screaming in slurred (more than normally slurred Mexican Spanish) Spanish. She then begins to not understand what I am saying when I ask for the price for the tamales or the kinds of tamales that she makes. Then, I ask her the fateful question in broken Spanish because this dude is screaming, "Sra. estas aqui / presente?" She walked away, then I hear her start screaming at the dude screaming earlier, and then they mention me. I felt like shit. I told her at the beginning that I was sorry because Spanish is my third language (though it is my best non-primary language now), but I got 0 help for that.
I finally said fuck it. Fuk this, i gotta sk8. I talked to my current Spanish teacher, a Puerto Rican lady who is awesome and I talked to the first Spanish teacher, a Madridian lady, who both recommended a restaraunt. I went to the best Mexican restaurant in town, at least in terms of authenticity, all the Mexican/Latino people who want Mexican food go there apparently. I went to La Taqueria Guadalupana, and I had no issues there. I talked to a guy named Mr. Manuel (he is the son of the manager/owner of the establishment), and from them I ordered enough food for about 100 people in tortas, vegetable quesadillas, and flan. He and I agreed that he would call me for a price, but it would be a reduced amount from about $325. My phone fucked up, didn't take the call, didn't alert me to it, didn't display a missed call, and the restaurant owner was like, "whadafuq," (in a Mexican accent I assume). I then called the place to talk about it and I was met with Mr. Manuel's girlfriend. I remembered the girl's voice from when I ate there and originally ordered the food. She was a pretty girl, she pretty much exemplified the in-her-20's 2nd generation Mexican-American girl stereotypes; she had too much make up on, red lipstick, large bust, large butt, and was overtly flirty at her workplace with her boyfriend Mr. Manuel. She was kind, and an attentive waitress, but, due to my luck when I was on the phone, could not speak any english. Because fuck me, I did something in the future that this anti-karma is for obviously. I asked her for her manager, and she responded by asking me what food I wanted. Refritos something, I forget exactly, but let's just say the phone call went poorly. I was not about to speak Spanish again, since my Spanish ego was really hurt from the Tamales Lady, and after about 3 attempts for the manager we both wished each other well and I said good bye. I tried again two days later, finally getting to the manager, and finally resolving the situation with me spending about $220 for 100 people's food. I was fucking pissed when the IFN had to be moved back due to our basketball team, when I realized I'd have to tell the people to not make the food 3 days in advance, but I was saved by the Puerto Rican teacher who effectively conveyed this in fluent Spanish to them. Saved by the bell.
Thanks for reading, TL, please laugh at my inability to speak a Romance language.
