December 16, 2011

3 Diciembre 2011



Today, while franticly shopping for the last few weeks of the program I ran into the typical cat calls on the streets.
One, particularly boisterous individual yelled across the street, in Spanish, “Do you speak French, beautiful?”
Normally, I ignore the philanderers, but for some reason, “No, ugly!” spilled out of my mouth in Quechua. To which, other individuals walking down the pedestrian filled road stared.
One elderly woman next to me stared at my face in shock, uncertain of what she just heard. I smiled warmly and asked, “Hi, how are you?” in Quechua. To which her mouth dropped and with a huge smile she began spilling a response of, “I am well, I am just doing my shopping…” and at that moment she slammed right into a wall that jutted out into our walk and her bags of shopping spilled everywhere. Not caring what-so-ever she continues in quechua, and then briefly, every time someone walked past exclaimed, “The gringa is speaking quechua!” And I am just as surprised as they are thinking, “ha! Yep! The gringa is speaking quechua!”

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