Teaching in Spanish, Going up a Volcano

When I first saw the announcement for the Fulbright grant to teach at Universidad Don Bosco, it said the assignment would consist of teaching in English. This struck me a bit odd. My impression of Central America up to that time was that not all that many college students are fluent in English. When I checked this with the faculty at UDB, they confirmed that it would be a lot better if I could teach in Spanish. So I pitched that as a strength in my application. And I'm here, so I guess they took me up on it.

As I get ready to start teaching for real in three more days, I'm recalling something I read by physicist Richard Feynman years ago in his very entertaining book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman about his experiences as a guest lecturer in Brazil. I just looked online and found a (probably illegal) downloadable version of the book, so now I can remind myself exactly what it was he said and share it with you verbatim:

I thought at first that I would give my lectures in English, but I noticed something: When the students were explaining something to me in Portuguese, I couldn't understand it very well, even though I knew a certain amount of Portuguese. It was not exactly clear to me whether they had said "increase," or "decrease," or "not increase," or "not decrease," or "decrease slowly." But when they struggled with English, they'd say "ahp" or "doon," and I knew which way it was, even though the pronunciation was lousy and the grammar was all screwed up. So I realized that if I was going to talk to them and try to teach them, it would be better for me to talk in Portuguese, poor as it was. It would be easier for them to understand.

During that first time in Brazil, which lasted six weeks, I was invited to give a talk at the Brazilian Academy of Sciences about some work in quantum electrodynamics that I had just done. I thought I would give the talk in Portuguese, and two students at the center said they would help me with it. I began by writing out my talk in absolutely lousy Portuguese. I wrote it myself, because if they had written it, there would be too many words I didn't know and couldn't pronounce correctly. So I wrote it, and they fixed up all the grammar, fixed up the words and made it nice, but it was still at the level that I could read easily and know more or less what I was saying. They practiced with me to get the pronunciations absolutely right: the "de" should be in between "deh" and "day"--it had to be just so.

I got to the Brazilian Academy of Sciences meeting, and the first speaker, a chemist, got up and gave his talk --in English. Was he trying to be polite, or what? I couldn't understand what he was saying because his pronunciation was so bad, but maybe everybody else had the same accent so they could understand him; I don't know. Then the next guy gets up, and gives his talk in English!

When it was my turn, I got up and said, "I'm sorry; I hadn't realized that the official language of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences was English, and therefore I did not prepare my talk in English. So please excuse me, but I'm going to have to give it in Portuguese."

So I read the thing, and everybody was very pleased with it. 

The next guy to get up said, "Following the example of my colleague from the United States, I also will give my talk in Portuguese." So, for all I know, I changed the tradition of what language is used in the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.

Some years later, I met a man from Brazil who quoted to me the exact sentences I had used at the beginning of my talk to the Academy. So apparently it made quite an impression on them.

But the language was always difficult for me, and I kept working on it all the time, reading the newspaper, and so on. I kept on giving my lectures in Portuguese--what I call "Feynman's Portuguese," which I knew couldn't be the same as real Portuguese, because I could understand what I was saying, while I couldn't understand what the people in the street were saying.

 I'll let you know how this teaching in Spanish thing turns out for me...wish me Feynman's luck.

Today I worked at my office at the university, for the first time on a Saturday. This was in part because I'm feeling some pressure to have everything in order for the start of class on Tuesday, and in part because it's my first weekend without Basilia in town, so I didn't have anything better to do. I spent the morning and early afternoon at the campus. At three Nelson Quintanilla came by the house to take me out for a mystery excursion. We went to Volcán San Salvador just outside the city. In his car it took less than 30 minutes from our apartment to the top of the volcano, which bristles with cafés, broadcasting antennas, local weekend excursionists and tourists (nearly all Latin American) and the inevitable vendors who flock to any tourist destination. Nelson said when he was a Boy Scout as a youth they hiked all the way up the volcano, down into the crater and back to town as a day trip, with none of this civilized stuff along the way. That must have been a hell of a hike.

With Nelson up on the volcano

When we got back to Antiguo Cuscatlán, Nelson came over to our apartment, where we drank beers and played guitar. I loaned him my Beatles fake book, a gift from my Uncle Bill (Swartz, not my other Uncle Bill [Engel]). He told me heartbreaking stories of being a student at the national university during the civil war in the 1980s, when soldiers would storm the campus, burn books, and occasionally haul students off without cause, never to be heard from again. We gringos have got it so good.

Some surprises of the last few days (San Salvador is always full of surprises):

•  Last night en route to the concert at the anthropological museum I noted that the circus that had been set up ever since we got to El Salvador is finally gone, and in its place there's...a heavy earth moving equipment trade show! It's a gigantic event, according to the newspaper an attempt to get the Salvadoran construction industry back on its feet after being practically shut down by the global economic crisis.
• On the steep paved road up the volcano today, we passed several cyclists, in full Lycra gear with nice road bikes. Pretty brutal ride, given the grade, the heat and humidity, and the diesel fumes from many passing trucks and buses. At least they had some substantially cooler and cleaner air to look forward to at the top if they made it.
• At the top the parking lot was thronged with BMW motorcycles, most of them bearing plates from Guatemala and Sinaloa, Mexico. We spoke with one of the few Salvadoran riders, and he said there are over 300 BMW riders in town for a gathering. He said they formed a 2 km long parade on one of the highways - must have been a sight.