Inauguramos la sección CRÓNICAS del Blog con un approach en inglés a la experiencia que compartimos en el taller
English Immersion. ¡Que la disfruten!
An English Chronicle
It was a long, dark Friday night. Then it was morning, time
for the English workshop. The fears of not being able to wake up in time were
defeated, and I was able to arrive at 11 on the dot.
To my surprise, the room was full. Almost every chair was
taken. It usually takes a little longer for people to arrive, but not this
time. Possibly, everybody was eager to speak English. I know I was.
Problem is, few people in the room knew each other. And that
creates a little awkwardness. People keep still, not knowing what to do, how
the rest are going to react. It’s as if they got frozen or something. So we
needed some way to make everybody comfortable. To “break the ice”, if you will.
What we needed was a game.
And the game was designed to make us mingle. I’m not a good
mingler, I have to say. I tend to get up and act like I’m mingling my ass off.
But in reality I do next to nothing. And not only we had to talk individually,
we had to talk to two people, and move about the room while doing so.
Fortunately, no one was paying attention to what I was
doing. I remembered the only time I went to church. It was in San Francisco. I
guess when you travel it’s natural to try crazy things you know you’d never do
at home. That particular time, the pastor made everybody say hello to ten
people. It was an exercise in politeness, I suppose. I did the same thing. I
stood up there, and was greeted by a few people. Not ten. I then got the hang
of it and saw that it wasn’t a big deal, but by then the exercise was over, and
we moved on to other things.
So I only talked to Veronica. I knew who she was, though I
didn’t tell her that. I think it’s because I’m shy, but maybe I like keeping
secrets from people. We had to tell each other three statements about oneself,
two truths and one lie. And I was able to figure out which one of hers was
false, because I knew the other two. Sneaking is fun.
The others had trouble telling which one of mine was the
lie. Apparently, liking to ride the subway is something of an eccentricity.
It’s very easy for me to be an eccentric, I find. Ceci’s was problematic also.
She said she hated eggplant. But it was very easy for everyone to believe that.
My feeling is, very few people actually like eggplant, but most say they do.
It’s politically correct or something. But when they go to a restaurant, they
order what they do like, like pizza.
Then it was time for the jigsaw puzzle. I never figured out
why we had it. I was the one who provided it. Ceci figured I must have one, and
she was right. So I chose one with a Disney picture on it. Felt right for an
English language workshop.
That game involved some acting, which was hard. Some people
are good at playing roles. I’m too busy playing what I think I should be like
in these situations, so it’s hard to also be someone else. Someone else I
didn’t even know, because the whole point was to guess what I was supposed to
be at the end, based on the others’ reactions to whatever I was doing.
The breakfast was good, I have to say. There was dip, so we
submerged the food in it and that made it more complete.
I think there were a couple of other games, which now enjoy
a leisurely stay in oblivion. The main one was a version of charades. It was
described like that. I was relieved it wasn’t charades. I’m not afraid to say I
despise that game. It would be one thing if people acted out the name of a
movie. But what actually happens is something else. There is a code established
already. People know the meaning of certain gestures. Like pointing at one’s
eye means “I”, and so forth. So instead of an exercise in creativity it becomes
a reading of the gestures. Add to that my limited physical expression range,
and you can see why I don’t like it. Plus it would be a bit of a waste in a
workshop designed to practice conversation in another language.
We all had to write down some celebrities’ names. Then one
would tell us about them, and we would guess who it was. The trick was to
choose people with whom we would all have some familiarity. I chose Margaret
Thatcher, which was probably off. There were safer choices. Three Beatles came
up, every one but George. Poor George. It probably happened because he was the
silent one, easy to overlook. But I noticed his absence, and he will be the
only one I mention here. So there.
I quickly noticed (I usually am quick to notice) that we
were a little short on names. I debated myself over whether to mention it. But
I decided that Ceci and Charlie knew what they were doing. They usually appear
to. They exude confidence.
And, sure enough, that was the idea. They planned to repeat
all the names twice (for a total of three times) in order for us to establish a
code. But not like the stupid Universal Charades Code that ruins its game. A
spontaneous one, one that only we knew about. And thus a code was born. For the
rest of the workshop, whenever someone would mention Brazil, we would think of
Xuxa. Some people probably do that anyway, but they don’t know it’s a code.
And then it was over. The three hours were up. It was now
afternoon. We all said our goodbyes and went on our ways. In the elevator and
on the way to the door, we discussed our English for a bit. But we did it in
Spanish. We didn’t wanna look like freaks.
