Esther

In honor of my first Spanish class ending this afternoon, this post is all about Esther, my profesora. Esther is someone that you would probably have to meet in person before you could understand the whole “experience.” She is very blunt, direct, silly, funny, and knows a heck of a lot of Spanish grammar. She is also well versed in current events and loves to spark a good debate on a hot topic. Having her as a profesora definitely made Spanish class more interesting, that’s for sure. So to attempt to share the Esther experience, I give you ten interesting Estherisms:

1. La silla eléctrica – Esther’s favorite way of interrogating people. She would make you come to front of the room and have everyone in the class ask you a question or two. But they had to be fuerte (strong). For example, she asked one girl’s visiting boyfriend within ten minutes of meeting him whether he liked to sleep in pajamas or nude. Classic Esther.

2. Por faplease – Esther’s own brand of Spanglish. She whipped this fun little phrase out one day in class and it just sort of stuck. Except instead of meaning please it’s more like a “you’ve got to be kidding me.”

3. Hacer rock-and-roll – Esther’s favorite question to ask us in the morning if we look tired. ¿Hicisteis mucho rock-and-roll anoche? (with a knowing look of course.) It sounds kind of bland through a blog post, but trust me, she made it entertaining.

4. Jetlag – One day when Caitlyn was particularly tired looking, Esther asked her if she still had jetlag. This was about two and a half weeks into class. After Caitlyn gave a sleepy moan as an answer, Esther responded, “Of course you are, I understand. But it’s jetlag between Cañadio and the university!” And then she laughed…a lot.

5. La leche – Spanish slang for the best/worst. For example, you could have a fiesta that’s la leche (a crazy good fiesta) or a calor that’s la leche (a disgustingly hot heat wave.) In our class, Italian Marguerita was la leche. Esther on Marguerita: “Marguerita, eres (you are) la leche. You talk when I don’t want you to and won’t talk when I want you to. Eres la leche.” In this case, the best translation would probably be: "Marguerita, you're unbelievable."

6. Ruski – Ruski was the nickname of Ulrike, a German girl in the class. From day one, Ulrike was crazy weird to say (I still can’t say it right, it’s deceptively easy on paper). So, Ulrike was promptly changed to Ruski, and soon everyone in the class was calling poor Ulrike Ruski. Ruski also let slip that she had a novio (boyfriend) back in Germany- bad idea! Esther quickly changed his name from Marcel to Marcelino Panetino and asked to see a picture of him every day. And of course this information earned Ruski a stint in la silla eléctrica.

7. Joder – Esther’s favorite interjection. Imagine "Hoe-dare!" with lots of H and emphasis on both syllables individually. I'm pretty sure this word is not at all a polite word in South America, but it Spain Spanish it's commonly used as an expression of amazement.

8. Josh in the baño – Josh was often tired in the morning. So naturally, when he was tired he was kind of out of it and didn’t always have a quick response to some of Esther’s questions. One particularly drowsy day, however, Esther got a little curious: “Joshua, do you smoke some marijuana in the bathroom every morning before you come to class?”

9. Elena and the World Cup – One day Esther decided to teach us about some of the more strange traditional Spanish foods. One that was particularly interesting- mashed up lamb/cow brains. Apparently, this is a very common food for Spanish people to feed to young children because it’s easier to digest than real meat. When Elena (the Dutch woman in our class) protested, saying she could never feed that to her children, Esther responded: “But who won the World Cup, Holland? Super brains, super babies! Ha!”

10. Clinton – Esther’s preferred nickname for me. For the first part of class, I never said anything about it. Then one day in conversation class we played the classic “two truths and a lie” game. Of course, one of my stories was that my mom had named me Hillary because she admired Hillary Clinton so much for being such a strong, intelligent leader. When this turned out to be the lie and I told Esther that in reality, my parents couldn’t stand her, she thought it was very amusing. She still calls me Clinton, but now there’s an added, “Your mother would kill me if she heard me call you that! Hahaha!”

And that’s Esther in ten fun facts.

Our class plus some of the English students: