i will always be "the intern"

This blog is coming long overdue. I have been working at a rescue centre for birds and have gotten to know a good chunk of the crew with whom I work. They are the stars of the next few posts.

I have met a lot of Ecuadoreans in the past 6 weeks. Ecuadoreans are generally very nice, warm, and welcoming. Those about which I can generalize have not made it into my blog.

José Antonio: It took me a while to warm up to him, but now I totally get a kick out of him and we joke around a lot. And by saying we joke around a lot, I really mean that he makes fun of me a lot. A lot. At first, I thought he just saw me as just the intern. After getting to know him better, I learned that that was not actually the case.

He definitely didn’t take me seriously…I was definitely not wrong about that. In fact, the more we got to know each other, the less seriously he took me. But his not taking me seriously was not because I was just the intern. It was actually for the same reason most people do not take me seriously. I am a lot more comfortable and accustomed to that, so it is really no biggy; however, my main concern right now is figuring out why MOST people do not take me seriously. It is either A) because I don’t take myself seriously, or B) because I don’t others seriously. It very well may be a combination of both, but comments on this post are welcome. Nothing offensive on this page please.

So who is this José Antonio guy? Why do I bother mentioning him? Why does he work at the park? Why does he make fun of me? Lets answer these questions:

Who is this guy? Why does he work at the park?
He was a falconer like the director of the foundation. He trains, flies, and feeds a number of the birds twice a day so that they get their exercise and get fed. He has been working with and studying birds for years. He has worked in zoos in Spain and Quito. Only the director and him are able to do flight exhibitions, and both of them have been falconers for eeons.

He is originally from Madrid and, for missing Spanish cuisine so much, has developed his cooking skills. He has taught me how to make croquettes and Spanish omelette. He also helps me with my Spanish. I am currently reading books in Spanish, and we occasionally sit down and go through the last 50 pages I have read and he acts as my personal dictionary and tells me the definition of all of the words I do not know. He has also taught me almost everything I know about birds.

I have really warmed up to him because he has a lot of confidence in me, and I can tell that he sees potential. He always wants to challenge me and wants me to learn more. While that is nice and all, I am sometimes freaked out because I don’t know where this confidence comes from. Because I often don’t share his sentiments…

Why does he make fun of me?
I think I give him a lot of material to work with.

Firstly, he thinks I eat a lot. The words I hear every day literally translate into “What a beast!” Yesterday he added “she is just a pit” and “You aren’t hungry? Are you sick?”

He makes fun of me because he thinks I am an alcoholic. Every day I bring a water bottle to work and he asked what was in it. Before I could answer he said “whisky?” After that I was known as the alcoholic intern. You would typically think that showing up to work hungover or actually drinking would give someone that sort of reputation. Not with me…apparently I am whatever people tell me to be. In this case that is in alcoholic. I tried convincing everyone that I actually don’t drink that much, but now I have given up and I too make jokes about what an “alcoholic” I am.

He also makes fun of me and the imaginary sex life. This topic of conversation has snowballed much like the alcoholic reputation. It started when one of the girls said “mañanero” and then asked if I knew what that meant. I don’t know how, but I actually guessed correctly that it meant “sex in the morning.” (You know you have a good grasp of the language when you can guess the meaning of words like “mañanero”) That day, I was talking to the taxi driver that I watched a Spanish movie the other day.
“Oh yah? Do you want to borrow some of my Triple X films?” he asked, thinking that I don’t know what Triple X is. I don’t think he realize that Triple X translates into Triple X in English…it doesn´t take a linguist to figure that out.
“No thank you,” I calmly replied, “I think I am satisfied with my mañanero.” José Antonio, everyone in the car (all the people from work returning back to town) was shocked that I knew the meaning of mañaneros and Triple X films. Everyone was laughing. It was funny. But I did not realize that from then on I had a reputation as a sex pot.

While this sex pot reputation can be embarrassingly hilarious at times, it has also proved to be just plain hilarious at other times. José Antonio has an intern whose parents were missionaries. The guy is 19 and he himself is a saint. He is from Texas, and consequently speaks perfect English. He happened to walk into the office when I was giving some of the workers an English lesson. I was teaching them useful words for the park, such as eagle, falcon, owl, nest, etc. When I saw him walk in I decided to put mañanero on the board. He naturally asked what it meant, and when I told him he fled the office with a scared look on his face. He told José Antonio what I had just told him. José Antonio decided to go along with it, so he told his intern to be careful because I was an “avion,” the Spanish word for plane and the word we use for someone who is quick to hit on people, someone who goes in for the kill, someone who is having a frequent mañaneros. ;)

That evening, we were taking the taxi back to town as usual and I was talking about how excited I was to sleep in on my day off.
“With who?” asked José Antonio.
“No mañanero?” asked the taxi driver.
“Probably not. It is a Sunday, it is always difficult to find someone on a Sunday.” I replied with a smile. Everyone in the taxi laughed, except for the saintly intern. I turned to him, “What are you doing tonight?”
“I am going to Quito” he said with conviction as he sank into his seat, thinking that the more he sank the further he would be away from me. “DIRECTO!” Everyone laughed at this too…except for the saintly intern himself.

Yepp…so José Antonio and I have definitely warmed up to each other.