my niño

meet gerard....

i have a niño...not biologically, but he´s my little catalan baby, and he´s amazing. he´s a firey read-headed 5 year old with glasses and too much energy. when i say i have a niño, i mean i teach english to him slash babysit him, in english. he can´t read or write in spanish or catalan so its actually impossible to teach him english with words. i read to him, but mostly we just end up drawing pictures or playing hide-and-seek or if its a really boring day, he´ll just sit there picking his nose counting from 0-100 continuously until he gets bored with that. i play with him on wednesdays and fridays for 2 hours each day and its nice because i have a little extra spending money and it has become sort of a hobby. sometimes i go to the cheap china stores and buy him fun games. we play go fish sometimes or yesterday we built an airplane and a helicopter. it was pretty fun. i´ve been doing this for about 2 monthsish now and this is what he can say in english:

numbers 0-100
colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, brown, white
animals: monkey, fish, dog, gat (cat) and elephant
words: house, sun, moon, boy
phrases: do you haves? my name is gerard. four in a row.

he´s 5, so he isn´t really interested in learning english, he just subconsciously picks it up, which just makes me realize how brilliant little kids are. yesterday was the last day i´ll see him for a month because its break now. his mom is very preggers and when i go back in january, gerard will be a big brother and there will be another little fiery red-headed catalan kid in barcelona.

why i like my job: well, my niño is just awesome and its actually good practice for me. he responds to me in spanish and catalan and i surprisingly understand him 95% of the time. i also get to speak with his parents about things, so its nice to have the opportunity for conversation. on wednesday though, i experienced the good side of language barriers...

gerard usually leaves half way through our session to "hacer ka-ka" or to go poop. so, like routine, he left and i heard him on the other side of the house talking to his dad....his dad was repeating something in english, something i figured he wanted gerard to come and tell me, because the parents dont speak much english, they can say a few things and phrases, but for the most part, they don´t know much but sometimes they´ll try their english out on me through gerard...so gerard came running back to me and already forgot what he was supposed to tell me. so his mom came in and kept whispering the phrase in his ear and finally after a few minutes he said: "you are tramper" and they both just looked at me like i was supposed to understand that. so tried asking me if "tramper" in english is like the word "tramposa" in spanish which means cheater or trickster..... and i said, well, you wouldnt really call someone a "tramper" and the dad comes in and says... ohhhhhhhh "you are a tramp". i started laughing and i explained to them that the word "tramp" in english has sort of evolved from meaning cool to more of a derogatory term directed at woman, like the spanish word "prostituta" (is how i compared it)..... then in the end, it all made sense, this was our conversation:

dad: "como el grupo de música, SuperTramp"
me: "OH, (the band SuperTRAMP) te gusta?"
dad: "SÍ, ME GUSTA MUCHO, no significa guai?
me: "ahora no, es como prostituta"
dad: "dios mio, discupalme!"
me: "no pasa nada, todo está bien"

he was actually just trying to compliment me because he really likes the band Super Tramp and thought it was pretty chulo. thank you language barrier for the good laugh.

side note: my family will be here in 2 days. you wanna know A.D.D? story of my life