que hotdog

I have been lucky enough to spend all of the afternoons this week at a different MSCR day camp site until Safety Town gets started in the afternoons. This means that I've spent my time playing with an entire class of pre-K hispanohablantes.

I tried to make friends with them by dropping compliments like your shoes are so cool, que cheveres tus zapatos. Only to be greeted with an inquisitive/confused look every time. I was wondering why my compliments were not succeeding when I suddenly recalled that "chevere" might be just a colombian word. I double checked with my guatemalan friend who informed me that it was only colombian, and sometimes used in chile. "In some places chevere actually means hot dog." Oh.

No wonder I was getting weird looks..."what hot dog shoes you have." I love my colombian slang but I need to start being able to distinguish between it and widely known spanish.

Hot dog shoes or not, I knew I had triumphed today while working when someone asked me, "Wait, you can speak english, right?"