lost in translation

two good stories.

the other day mali, natalie and i decided to stop at this fairly small market on the way back from school. i need "house shoes" my mom tells me everyday which are just a pair of shoddy flip flops. whoops cause my two options were che guevara or brazil's national soccer team (both too small for my monster feet). so i decided no to that. there was a tiny little station set up with some fabric that i have been on the prowl for. so i was just looking. emphasis on looking. i greeted the woman selling it as i should, and then i asked her the measurements and how much it cost. it was more than i had with me so i told her i loved it and maybe i could come back later. wrong answer.
she went nuts and started yelling at me in wolof and then took a nice swipe at my face. luckily i have been in this spy/detective craze so she didn't get me. but i got out of there faster than you can say alxamdulilaay.
mali and i were trying to figure out what i said that was so offensive because i didn't touch anything or do anything that i thought would attract these "evil spirits" that attack small children when you say how cute they are. and also....it's fabric so i sincerely hope the spirits chill out and go for cute puppies or something instead of a piece of beautiful cloth. there is a jealousy issue going on here.

second story.
in public health class today we did HIV/AIDS part 2. and our prof asked us what are some std's that we can name blablabla so a girl katie said "herpes" with a little influx at the end because she wasnt sure if it was the same word in french; however, instead of hearing herpes, the prof heard "chaude pisse." the literal translation of this would be hot urine. suddenly a room of 19-21 year olds could not stop laughing/crying/pulling stomach muscles because chaude pisse was so not what katie said. the prof then proceeded to talk about chaude pisse (he translated it, talked about how its a good clue that you have an std, so on and so forth). all maturity was lost.

dinner:
i was excited because it looked like steak frites and who doesn't love a good plate of fries and steak right? well awesome because it was liver. i couldn't do it. the meat was all on the bottom of the plate covered by fries and onions. i quickly apologized to my arteries because i knew i would eat a lot of this (before i knew it was liver) and then worked out in my head how many years of life i will lose by eating the saturated fat i could see oozing from every molecule of fry. then i stuck my fork into the mix and took a nice succulent bite. nope nope nope. as soon as i bit down on the liver i knew i was doomed. i started gagging. like the severe kind before you puke where your eyes start watering and you make weird gurgling sounds. luckily the tv was on so i turned around and faced it while we ate so i could close my eyes and just try to swallow this massive amount of animal organ inside my mouth.

by the hammer of thor i need a salad.