Rolling your “r”s can be difficult in tight pants

In our Spanish class we read passages from a book intended for young children. The first story was about a mouse looking out of his bedroom window at the moon and the stars. The second was about King Midas and the “midas touch”. It was embarrassing that I couldn’t even pronounce some of the words let alone understand what they meant.

We then went on to extend the story about the mouse and say what he did next. Pamela had the advantage there because of her primary teaching background. She explained (in very good Spanish) that the mouse thought there was a man in the moon (el hombre de la luna). She told us that the mouse thought the man was eating the moon because it was made of cheese (la luna está hacer de queso) which made the moon smaller (mas pequeña).Very impressive stuff I can tell you. My best effort was that the mouse closed the curtains and went to sleep.

Anyone who has tried Michel Thomas’ CDs to learn Spanish would be led to believe that you only need to understand about 600 words to read most newspapers. I can assure you Mr Thomas, you’d need a more extensive vocabulary to read that children’s book.