No hablo espanol (bien)

I was doing a teambuilding activity with my Escojo group the other day. They all had to grab each others' hands, making a knot, and then unravel the knot without letting go of the hands. So after everyone was tangled into this huge human knot, I told them all to "desnudar." I did not know the word for untangle, but "des" is a prefix that means undo, and "nudo" means knot, so in my mind, it all made sense. However when the kids gave me weird looks and the boys started jokingly taking off the clothes of the girls, I soon realized that "desnudar" means to undress. Oops.

Along with learning Spanish, I have also had to learn Dominican Spanish. Dominican Spanish is a language all its own. Instead of saying "poco" meaning little, they say "chin." Another example: In Spanish, the word "guapo" means cute or handsome. But here, it means angry. So whenever one of the girls in my girls' club would tell me about her boyfriend, I would ask her if he was guapo, if he was handsome. They all told me no. I thought they were all telling me me that their boyfriends were ugly, but they thought I kept asking them if their boyfriends were angry. Oops.

When I first arrived in Baoba, the question that everyone asked me was if I had lived with a man before. I was confused as to why this question was so important, and I answered yes, I had lived with my dad for 18 years, before I left for college, and for some reason, this answer was not socially acceptable here in the Dominican Republic. Later I found out that to live with a man means to have sexual relations. It does not simply mean what the words say - to live in the same house a man. No wonder everyone thought I was wierd when I said that I had lived with my dad. Oops.