News: Spanish Spoken Here

Location: Delhi, India
Local Time: Saturday, Oct 15, 2005 - 12:00pm

Okay, I was born in Canada, lived there all my life, (except those brief excursions later in life to far away countries). I have spoken English as my primary language all my life, and as my ONLY language until a couple years ago. I still don't understand what these people are saying to me here. They give me prices, numbers, and I'm off by hundreds. I swear the guy yesterday at the trainstation said 870Rs. But no, 317Rs was the actual price. He even said it to me one number at a time, eight - seven - zero. Or at least that is what I heard.

And some guy came to my hotel room last night at midnight. He buzzed and woke me up and I swear he was saying that there was room in my room for a couple more men. Of course, maybe I was still just half asleep. Eventually he could see I had no idea what he was trying to say and he left.

At least when I don't understand someone speaking Spanish to me I have a handy excuse.

I had two conversations in Spanish yesterday, and that is not the first time I've heard the language since I arrived. I did not know there would be so much of it here. The first conversation was an older gentleman at the YMCA in the restaurant. I did not get a chance to ask him where he was from.

The second was with a couple of girls in the trainstation when we were waiting for tickets. They were from Spain and had just arrived the night before. I didn't actually get their names. When we were introducing ourselves, my name reminded them of a food in Spain and suddenly we were talking about things to eat. Apparently there is a dish, St. Jacob.

They highly recommended I visit Spain. Like that wasn't on my list of things to do.