Teaching English

I've had kind of an interesting experience this week that Andy thought would be fun to blog about, even though some of the content might be a little gross.

A couple of weeks ago when Andy and I were sick when I met Sonia. Sonia is a lab tech at the clinic, and when I went back to the clinic with my ahem, sample (which is a whole other story), she was there to test it and see what kind of parasite or bacteria I had. While I was waiting for the test Sonia began to talk to me, some in English and some in Spanish. After 20 minutes, the test was done, I had a parasite, and Sonia had invited me over to her house to practice English the next week.

At first I didn't know what to think. I mean, how many times do you get invited to someone's house after you have handed them a cup of poop?

But I decided to go ahead and meet her one morning. The first time Andy came with me, and Sonia, her husband, Andy and I sat in their living room and chatted in Spanish. Then we got down to teaching English. I figured she would want to learn some basic words and phrases, but alas I was wrong. Here are some of the phrases she asked me to teach her:

I am going to take your blood now.
Please urinate in the toilet a little first, and then in the cup.
You have a parasite.
You have a fever
Go in the bathroom and bring back the sample (of urine, of stool - although for some reason at the time I couldn't think of the word stool, and only could tell her the word poop)
And so on and so on.......

It turns out that most of the people she works with are English speaking tourists, and everything she needed to know related to her job. While the conversation was awkward, I realized that I was thankful to hopefully help her, which in turn will help sickly tourists not have to ask, "you want me to do what in the cup???".........more than once.

Overall, I have enjoyed talking with Sonia. She has been incredibly friendly and welcoming, and I now have a new friend in Peru.