Two months to the day of being in Uruguay marked our first day of language school. It was not without it's trials. Our child care helper arrived promptly at the appointed time, we said bye to the kids and got in our borrowed car. Scott turned the key to hear... absolutely nothing. Sigh, it was gonna be one of those afternoons.
Never fear, the car was parked on a slight down grade so Scott got out and pushed a little then popped the clutch. Nothing. Again and again and yet again he attempted to start the car but it wouldn't cooperate. At one point he said it all brought back memories. I remembered the very same days back when we were dating and he had a truck that occasionally needed to be "popped" to start up. Being the gentlemen that he was (and is even more so today) he allowed me to be the popper while he was the pusher. Let's just say it wasn't pretty. I even drove off without him. I guess that's why he didn't let me be the "popper" today. I was going to offer but didn't want to be a show off after all he needed to go to language class too. Ha.
Well, popping the clutch didn't work so Scott called Archie. I ran back to the house (ok, I walked, it was only a half a block and it is hot here you know) to call our language instructor to let her know we were going to be late, but I couldn't find her phone number. So I walked back to where the car was only to find it an entire block further up the road, and still not started. The battery was completely dead. As I stood by Archie's van I noticed a lot of water under it but we just had a deluge of rain so I thought nothing of it. When the guys got back up to the van Scott's very keen mechanical eyes noticed there was a HUGE puddle of OIL under the van...oops. I probably shouldn't wear sunglasses on a cloudy day.
Now I'm thinking to myself, "Well there goes language school today. No car, no van what do we do now? Maybe we can ride the bus, but where do we get off? Maybe a friend can take us on their Moto, but there are two of us and I'm not too sure I'm ready for the 3 passenger moto experience. Scratch that idea." I headed back to the house for a more thorough search for the phone number to call our teacher. Once I found it and called her she was not at all phased and told me to come when we could manage. As soon as I hung up Scott came in they had taken the battery out of the van and put it into the car and we were off to language school.
Hopefully you're not thinking that our first language class was more exciting than our attempts to get there. It wasn't! Our teacher is great! She responds well to my confused expression and explains in English what I didn't get in Spanish. We have our first homework assignment studying greetings and introductions and putting the correct masculine or feminine articles with the jobs pictured on the page. Did you know that "I don't understand." is said, "No entiendo." It is NOT said, "No tiento/tienta. (no care/shop)"? No wonder people looked at me so strangely when I told them I didn't understand.
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