Settling In, part 11

After a few weeks in my Spanish class I was feeling frustrated. There was not enough conversation practice for me. Grammar was my strong point—it was fluency in speech where I most needed help. The class was fun enough, and good for grammar review, which was important, but Dolo tended to do most of the talking.

I remembered that I had a phone number for a conversation group, which I’d gotten in Lauren Williams’ aerobics class. I thought it might be a good way to supplement what we were doing in class, so I called the number and spoke to Jan Carlson. She turned out to be the wife of an American Embassy worker who lived in the fancy neighborhood of Somosaguas.

“We have just a small group,” she said, “with a teacher, Victoria Sánchez.” I knew that name from Ana—Victoria’s husband worked in ODC with Phil. Those two couples had in common that the wives were Spanish and the husbands American military men.

“May I join you?” I asked.

“Sure, the more the merrier,” Jan said, and she gave me directions to her house.

To enter Somosaguas you had to stop by the unmanned entry gate, get out of your car, and press a button that opened the gate. Then you had to jump back in your car and drive through before the gate closed. I couldn’t figure out what kind of security this provided.

Jan’s house was a low-slung, modern white box with lots of windows looking onto a pretty lawn. I met Jan, a simply dressed woman of around my age with short, straight brown hair and freckles. Three or four other American women were there, and Victoria was handing out some papers.

“Here are some grammar review exercises for you,” she said. My heart sank. Just what I didn’t need!

Victoria was movie star glamorous, with long brown hair in a sort of Farrah Fawcett style. She was tall and had a great figure. She had us do some speaking in Spanish, but most of the class, to my great disappointment, was spent going over the grammar exercises. She did bring up one point of pronunciation that interested me, though.

“Did you know that in Spain we lisp the c and z before consonants as well as vowels?” she asked. I had never heard of such a thing. I pronounced zebra “thebra” and Barcelona “Barthelona,” but she said that her own name should be pronounced “Vith-toria.” It took some practice, but after a few tries I got it down.

Jan’s little beagle ran in while we were working. “Guapito!” she exclaimed.

“Tell Susie the story about Guapito,” Victoria said.

Jan started to laugh. “Do you know what guapito means?” she asked.

“Not really,” I said.

“It means ‘cutie,’ but it’s the sort of word you’d use when you’re coming on to someone,” she explained. “Well, I had some laborers working out in the yard one day, and the dog got out when he wasn’t supposed to. I ran into the yard and yelled at him, ‘Guapito, Guapito!’ and one of the workers started running toward me saying ‘Vengo, cariño!’ (I’m coming, darling)!”

I saw Ana later that day and gave her my new information about Spanish pronunciation.

“That woman is crazy,” Ana said. “Only a truly low-class person would be so ignorant as to pronounce ‘Victoria’ as ‘Vith-toria’.” I took that as the final word on the subject and didn’t return to the conversation group.