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Pescar en río revuelto
I’ve swum in a few of Colombia’s rivers, but I’ve never fished in any of them. And perhaps that’s for the best– it doesn’t look like that activity is looked upon too favorably, especially now that many...
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¡Te fajaste!
I was off work on Friday, but we had a little lunch party at the site where I’ve been working for the past few months to celebrate some birthdays. Seven interpreters (Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic,...
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Popcorn quiz
Everybody knows that there are a lot of ways to say drinking straw in Spanish. And there are almost as many words for baby bottle as there are babies. But for my money, I think the word that might have...
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About the benjamins
As a kid, I always loved to peruse my parents’ adult books. No, not “adult” books, just grown-up books about parenting and marriage (although, naturally, certain scandalous tidbits were especially...
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Tomémonos un tinto, seamos amigos
Reading some articles the other afternoon in El Tiempo, I noticed on the side box the top five shared articles. Number one was Panties y tinto, dos negocios que interesan a inversionistas foráneos....
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Abuzz
How was your Halloween? ¿De qué te disfrazaste? I was a queen bee–abeja reina–and my friend was a beekeeper–el colmenero. We went to a costume dance party and basically won the costume part, but since...
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Back to Bogotá
La vida da muchas vueltas: I’m moving back to Colombia on January 1. In a nutshell, I’ll be doing three things: writing, translating, and studying. I want to blog a lot more, and I plan to eventually...
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One-week check-in
I got to Bogotá one week ago today, so I thought I’d perform a one-week self check-in, mostly language-related. (Or check-up) Here are some of my scattered thoughts. 1. Bogotá is an immense city. So,...
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Little chicken hearts
A friend and I headed to the Biblioteca Virgilio Barco on Sunday–a place that I think is far and away the most beautiful spot in Bogotá–and on the way stopped to get some lunch. We went to Sopas de...
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Animalia
Bogotá doesn’t have an official zoo, but who needs a zoo when you have a language? Spanish is teeming with creatures great and small. Except for the other week when I held a dog named Parchita tethered...
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Vocabat’s first video
I’ve always wanted to make a video for this blog so you could experience the immense pleasure of hearing me speak in Spanish, but every time I recorded something I’d find an excuse to let it wither on...
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Handshake
The only famous people I could give two hoots about serendipitously meeting here in Colombia are a very small number of politicians I respect and a few writers. Well, Shakira too (and her adorable...
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Hispanophone
How many phones do you have? Un fijo? (A landline?) Un celular? (A cell phone?) Pretty typical. Here in Colombia (and many other parts of the Spanish-speaking world), though, you get two more phones....
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Celebrating Gabo
Last Thursday was a comedy of errors for me, but it also had some beautiful moments. For Semana Santa (Holy Week), I went to Huila, a neighboring department that Bogotá D.C. just barely nuzzles. We...
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Colombia: A simple country
You know that famous acronym KISS? Keep it simple, stupid? Well, I feel that it could easily be Colombia’s slogan. Manténgalo sencillo, imbécil. MSI–no, it doesn’t have the same ring to it. Ring or no...
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Change we can believe in
In the last real post we covered change as in small bills and change (change for a 20, for example), and in this one we’ll look at the change you get back after paying for something. Or not–the...
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World Cup Spanish questions
Colombia has won all four of its first four games at the World Cup (Greece, Ivory Coast, Japan, Uruguay), and the excitement here is extreme, to say the least. Led by Argentinian coach José Pékerman,...
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Gol gol gol
This post is going to be all about the goal. The goal area, goalie, net, posts, and, well, goals. It’s always important to have goals in life, and it’s especially important to have goals in a soccer...
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World Cup Spanish- Colombia’s out
Well, waaah. Colombia’s out of the World Cup, and I was feeling quite glum for a while. What was the point of continuing with World Cup Spanish vocabulary? What got me out of that funk? Colombians, of...
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Colombian greetings, redux (The Bogotá Post)
There’s a new English-language newspaper in town called The Bogotá Post, and I have the honor and pleasure of writing a column for them on all things Spanish. It’s the same beat that I have here on the...
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