Hablo espanol?

Rob Price

My wife and daughter and I drive to Canada every year for a two-week vacation that includes mingling with a lot of Canadians. We like Canada a lot. We especially enjoy the cultural thrill of speaking "Canadian," a language with a lot of idiomatic expressions that use the word "eh."

Recently, we decided to add something new to our traveling routines and flew to Mexico in order to mingle with our neighbors on the other side of the good old U.S. border. That would include my mother-in-law, who moved to Mexico a couple of years ago under the impression it's an affordable country in which to spend one's retirement.

Not wanting to appear uncouth "yankees," we boned up on the Spanish language in preparation for the trip. My wife took a four-week immersion course in Spanish at Alfred University, and every night our daughter and I asked her what new words she had learned.

Then we flew to a city in Mexico called Toluca. There, a pleasant Mexican man named Daniel met and drove us for many hours in the direction of the city that my mother-inlaw now calls home. We call it San Miguel de Allende. It's located in the mountains of Mexico, about four hours northwest of Toluca; but since I really have no idea where Toluca is, I don't have a clue where San Miguel is located. If anybody out there has a map of Mexico, give me a holler.

Daniel drove us many miles through the mountains, then stopped at a roadside restaurant where they sold barbecued lamb. In Mexico, the English word "barbecue" becomes "barbecua," but the general idea stays the same. Cook the animal over low heat for many hours until it is falling off the bone.

Daniel explained to us (in excellent English) that the owners of this restaurant cooked the lambs in an actual pit covered with big, heavy leaves from an agave plant. The "barbecua" was delicious. We doused it with various hot sauces that made our mouths explode, then wrapped it in fresh tortillas that in Mexico serve as a sort of all-purpose food delivery system.

"How many Americans are in this restaurant?' I asked Daniel (in excellent English).

Daniel looked at me, then my wife, then our daughter. "About three," he said.

This was thrilling news. We were having a genuine Mexican experience, mingling with Mexicans just as casually as when we mingle with our Canadian friends.

Unfortunately, they were just about the last Mexicans we saw during the trip. It turned out my mother-in-law lives in a house a couple of miles outside San Miguel city limits. The house is surrounded by high walls. People came by to visit, but they weren't Mexicans. They were Americans with names like Henry and Didi.

We did see actual Mexicans when we drove into San Miguel for some sightseeing. There, I experimented with my elementary Spanish, saying "Buenos dias" to everyone I met. "Buenos dias" means "good morning," and you only say it before the noon hour. It's also important to pronounce the expression correctly. On our last day in Mexico, my daughter advised me I had been saying "Buenos Dios" to everyone, which means "good God."

But no one seemed to mind. Mexicans appear willing to put up with idiot American tourists, just as our Canadian friends tolerate my occasional eccentricities. That would make Mexico very similar to Canada, which we plan to visit in a couple of weeks in order to mingle with our Canadian friends. It will take as long to drive to our cabin in northern Ontario as it did to fly to Toluca - another similarity between the two countries that protect our northern and southern borders.

There are, of course, significant differences between Canada and Mexico. One of them is the fact that in Canada you don't have to eat tortillas with every meal. In Mexico, tortillas accompany every meal, and frankly I got tired of them after, oh, one or two.

If there is one food group in Canada that is as common as tortillas in Mexico, it would have to be beer. Strangely enough, I've never gotten tired of this national beverage.

Gracias Dios!