El baño, that's one of the first words you should learn and pronounce if you plan on a trip to a Spanish placeOk I stopped at the point where I met my host family in Guadalajara during an immersion program I did there. The owner of the house Chuy had a sister who lived several doors down named Felix who was also a single mom in her forties. Felix had three children and also hosted students for the foreign program at the Universidad de Guadalajara. I was so nervous and so was Chuy—I spoke little to no Spanish and she spoke little to no English—it was one big mess. What made things worse was I had to use the bathroom bad and I could not ask the question where is the bathroom in any kind of intelligible way. Andrea finally ran down to her Aunt Felix and got her bilingual cousin Tricia to come and translate my butt out of this increasingly serious jam. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s a great majority of Mexican in Santa Barbara came from Guadalajara. Felix and Chuy had a sister that lived there and Felix sent her two older children there Tricia and Junior to attend school there and learn English. I was so happy to meet Tricia who spoke English seasoned with some round the way home girl slang that tipped one off that this Latina was cool with black folks. She quickly pointed me to the bathroom (el baño) to which I practically sprinted. Then she made the necessary introduction to my host family; we all had a good laugh once they realized what I was frantically trying to say.
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