This made for a long day on Tuesday – Spanish from 8:30-10:30, piñata class from 10:30 to 12, Spanish again from 12-1. A trip to the bank to change travelers checks, 2 hours of Spanish homework, dinner with my homestay family, and salsa class at 9:00.
In piñata class, I learned all the words for balloon, glue, wrapping paper, tissue paper, bucket, and verbs related to making papier mache….as well as the history of the piñata. According to the instructor, piñatas evolved from an old Italian decoration, called a “pignatta” that came to Mexico with the conquistadores in the 1600’s. The Italians got the idea from the Chinese, gracias a Marco Polo. Who knows where the Chinese got it from, but the lineage persists in that the Spanish word for ‘tissue paper’ is ‘paper from China.’ My instructor says the word ‘pregnant’ evolved from the concept of something filled with good stuff….and its slang origin is the reason it was not a word spoken in ‘polite society’ for so long. Very interesting.
The first day, we created the papier maché ‘bodies’ which we left out in the ubiquitout Baja sun to dry, while today we built the bases for the 7 ‘horns’ that represent the Seven Deadly Sins. In Mexico, the Chinese-Italian concept was blended with catholic teachings and endures today…those Jesuits and Dominicans found all kinds of ways to reinforce their message! There was lots of joking about the 7 sins, the instructor claiming that he could not list them all because he only remembered the ones he had committed. There are 5-6 people working on the piñatas, apparently all employees of the Casa de la Cultura, and their task is to make 50 of them to sell as fundraisers for the Christmas time. I am quite a novelty to them, and they are appear to enjoy teaching me as much as I enjoy learning spanish from them.
Saturday I revisited the park where the astronomers hang out, and got an impromptu lecture on galaxies, black holes and lunar phases, further padding my vocabulary. I’m getting much braver about ‘guessing’ when I don’t know the right word – so many words in Spanish can be created from a similar English root and a Spanish suffix such as ‘-dora,’ ‘-ista’ or ‘-ito’ ---and I am finding that if I pronounce the root as I would in Spanish and hesitate just a tad, the helpful local listener will add the right suffix – an ad hoc Google translater!
And Sunday, I noticed an announcement for a free presentation of Hamlet - again, en español. As one who sails to Vancouver just for the Shakespeare festival, I HAD to see this! Try to imagine Hamlet in simpler language (the translation was done in a way that even I could understand most of it!) supported by melodramatic music more evocative of a soap opera than Stratford on Avon. Hamlet, described frequently as 'loco' throughout the presentation was clearly NOT the protagonist in this recasting!
And Sunday, I noticed an announcement for a free presentation of Hamlet - again, en español. As one who sails to Vancouver just for the Shakespeare festival, I HAD to see this! Try to imagine Hamlet in simpler language (the translation was done in a way that even I could understand most of it!) supported by melodramatic music more evocative of a soap opera than Stratford on Avon. Hamlet, described frequently as 'loco' throughout the presentation was clearly NOT the protagonist in this recasting!
