Spanish Jokes

Learning a new language is just hard. I've been getting better at spanish, but it has honestly been a very slow process. Everyone said "Oh, you'll just pick it up when you get here" and to some degree yes, it's easy to pick up key phrases or key words, but fully understanding and being able to respond to things is a whole other story.

I've been taking lessons at a local language school and meeting with my intercambio buddy, Daniel. He wants to learn english so we speak in each language for about 45 minutes. (I did take about a 2 week break from both of these things, but know I'm back on track!) And here's my story from last night's intercambio meeting....

Here is a little background on this topic first. So everyday at the hogar Brianna and I eat lunch with all of the other tias (the staff at the hogar) and they all sit and talk in VERY fast spanish. I catch a few words here and there or try to respond when they say something to me, but a lot of the time if I'm lost I just watch the news that is on the TV in the background, because they actually speak at a normal speed on the news! So one of the tias, Tia Carmen, is just a really funny woman and always tells jokes to the girls, to any guests that come to lunch, she has so many jokes..... and the new joke of her jokes is to say it, everyone laughs and then everyone looks at me to see if I understood it. I NEVER get her jokes.... ever. So then everyone always laughs even harder! I mean I think it's funny now too, and understanding jokes in another language is just hard. You're focusing on the words so much and trying to understand it that it losing the humor.

So I was telling all of this to my intercambio buddy and he decided to test it out. So he told me a joke that his father tells at every family get together...... I did not get it. So we then spent the next 10 minutes explaining the joke word by word, as slow as possible. We were in the park and I'm sure if any other Chileans heard us they probably thought I was insane. However, I finally got it!!! And I laughed!! Then he made me memorize it so I could tell the tias.... I'm not sure about it, I will have to practice it some today, but I think I'm going to give it a try. Here is the joke in English so you can see how SIMPLE it really is....

A man ran to the doctor and said "Doctor, help me! My wife has gone crazy and thinks that she is a lawn mower!"

The doctor said "I can help you, but where is your wife?"

The man said "Oh, I let my neighbor borrow her."

**Small disclaimer: My intercambio buddy is very Chilean meaning he mumbles and speaks certain words very fast. So some days it's hard, but it's good for me because he really is helping me to be able to listen better when talking with someone in Spanish.

I then proceeded to tell him knock, knock jokes in english because I didn't know any other jokes. He didn't find them very funny.....