¿Hablas español? or “my Funny Spanish Lesson...”
I travel to Roatan yearly for a few weeks at a time to work at the resorts Caribe Tesoro and her sister, Bananarama...
As a General Contractor, I've always loved to work on electrical, plumbing, sewage, maintenance, and improvements at the resorts. It's fun hard work and the team there are amazing workers. They shine with what we accomplish, and nothing brings people together more than a project well done.
The work is dirty, think Mike Rowe from the tv show "Dirty Jobs". After two weeks, my supply of work clothes is down to zero.
I spoke with Marlene, our head of housekeeping and asked if she'd be able to wash my clothes.
Marlene only speaks Spanish and I only speak English. And she asked me a question that I assumed was "how do you want them done?".
I smiled big and said, "Regular por favor... regular..." That's what I thought I was saying.
A couple days go by, I'm now re-wearing my dirty clothes from the day before, but I don't want to bug housekeeping, as guests come first.
But my team show up wearing clothes that look surprisingly like mine... Carlos is wearing a nice pair of Duluth Trading shorts. Juan, Benjamin and Rafael are in heavy duty work shirts.
As nice as they looked, something about the "gracias Sr. Guy" and the non-stop smiles got me thinking "mmm... something ain't right here".
When we had a break, I went to the laundry room and asked about my clothes. Marlene excitedly began talking and Spanish is spoken about 25% faster than English, so now, I'm completely lost. Just smiling up and down at Marlene, I found our accountant nearby (she is bi-lingual) and she explained to me that Marlene was saying everyone was happy for all the "regalos".
Regalos, regular. Now it hits me. When I said "regular", she just thought I was saying the laundry was "regalos" and that I just had lousy Spanish (I do). (Regalos means gifts in Spanish.)
We laughed and fell all over the laundry room! She gave me my underwear back and said “nobody wanted them”........ this caused us to roar and flop around even more!
She got the workers to return my clothes...... The Hondureños are always so gracious and humble... I was so embarrassed. Every day for the next couple weeks the workers and I would just laugh incessantly and they'd gibber in Spanish. I still wonder what they were saying about this crazy old man!
I'm glad that I didn't try to say that I was "embarazada"... (I found out that doesn't mean embarrassed.)
I learned a valuable lesson. When I travel down now, I take extra clothes to give away, as many of the locals are poor, and the items we take for granted can be so precious to them.......