Living, Learning & Loving La Vida Nueva

Thursday, February 4, 2010

¡Bienvenidos!

You guessed it . . . "¡Bienvenidos!" means "Welcome!" in Español. 
Wish I had known that before I got here. 
Approximately 36 hours after we landed in Cancún, I found myself in the middle of a Mexican church service during "Meet and Greet Time." Oh boy! And believe you me, these people don't play any greeting games. After they sing hymns, the band comes up to play some worship choruses and during the first chorus, everyone - and I mean everyone - leaves their seat and greets as many people as they can manage to shake hands with in about 3 minutes time. Well, needless to say, J and I were obviously visitors and pretty much the whole back half of the church came to welcome us. Well that was nice, only I had no idea what they were all saying: ¡Dios le bendiga! - 'Hmmm....Something about God....'
and
¡Bienvenidos! - 'Who knows, but it's easier to say....'
So, I had settled on greeting everyone for the next minute and a half with a kinda, sorta mumbled version of this ¡Bienvenidos!
It wasn't until after the church service that I asked J what exactly 'bienvenidos' meant.......

Great, I welcomed everyone to their own church.
 I can only imagine how many people had to suppress outbursts of laughter as not to embarrass me.
Oh well, you live and you learn.
:o)


So, this blog is for . . . Stories and laughs, like this one, and more thoughtful writings of my perspective of life here. 
Enjoy! It's time for me to get crackin' on dinner . . .
-Abby

5 comments:

  1. You are making me cry!!!!!! This is beautiful!

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  2. This is gonna be fun! My girl has a blog!!!! Love the story. It cracked me up!!

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  3. Okay, am weird since I was crying and you are laughing? LOL I was referring to the stuff on the left!!!!

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  4. I remember doing almost the same thing on one of our village trips. I kept telling the kids that I didn't speak English only to discover that I was telling them that THEY didn't speak English. What a dork!

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  5. Abby, when I went to Mexico, the school had been virtually abandoned and so the roaches had taken over the kitchen and rooms. Fortunately, there was a Lowe's across the border and we got "Bug Stop". it can in a large gallon size with a sprayer. All the little buggers were "toes up." I hosed my room down with it too and the window frame and didn't have any the next AM. Had to open the windown as there was no air. Hope you can find Bug Stop in the stores there.

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