For my English Festival, I had a song that I thought 2nd and 3rd grade might sing (they opted out at the last minute, and since we'd be starting to practice it at the last minute, I thought that was a good plan), I had Daddy Yankee's song "Pose" three times as background to the fashion show, and I had a country song for 6th grade to line dance. I'm terrible with the speaker/microphone/etc at this school, so I asked the PE teacher for some help. After we figured out what to play when, he asked me when we would get started. (He had a field trip of sorts and needed to leave.) "Now," was my answer, given that it was already a little after 8:30. "¿A qué horas?" was his response. This is another thing I've had to learn. "¿Cuándo?" (When?) refers only to days. If you want to ask today when something will start today, you have to ask, "At what time?" My response stayed the same, "Ahora."
"Pero, ¿A qué horas?"
And still, I'm responding, only now, more emphatically, "Now."
At that, I walked out of the office, grabbed the mic, and got started. Only after I started the event did I realize where we had lost it in translation. Now here is not now. It's sometime in the (hopefully near) future.
Someday that will be ingrained in my brain. Until then, I'll struggle!
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