Unluckiest of Days

Day 389 – August 14, 2012

I take Spanish lessons.

I do this because I live in a Spanish-speaking country and charades only get me so far when I need to communicate with all manner of Peruvians.

In almost over a year of taking classes on how to conjugate, how to understand the difference between ser and estar, and how to speak with the impersonal se, I now have two objectives when in class. The first is to learn how to speak better.

The second is to attempt to derail the class. I do this by asking the teacher questions about life and culture in Peru. Usually, when I make my move to move the conversation away from our exercise book and into all things Peruvian, I have to come up with a clever segue to change the direction from conjugating in the past tense to the vacation habits of folks from Lima.

Today, however, was a slam dunk as one of our exercises contained a bit of dialog where one of the actors said that (and I’m translating here) “Tuesday the 13th was a day of bad luck”.

This prompted me to ask if it was true that Martes trece was a day of poor fortune and, if so, why was this.

She could not explain why, but not only did my teacher confirm that Tuesday the 13th was indeed an unlucky day in Peru, but that it pales in comparison to the doom and gloom that comes with Sunday the 7th.

So bring out your good luck charms and mal de ojos to ward off the nasty spirits as this coming October sees a Sunday the 7th and November contains a Tuesday the 13th.

By the by, if you want to see some other results of how I have railroaded our class into divergent discussion, click on over to here…

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