John you will think this is funny...

It's slightly awkward teaching Spanish when I don't know the language very well. It's even more awkward that some of my students are fluent Spanish speakers. Actually, it's awesome in most cases - they are really great and help the students. But today, it ended up causing a minor commotion.

I was reading aloud our pen pal letters from Prof. Josue Sanchez de San Pedro, Costa Rica and his class. Some of his students were being little tricksters. They wrote about their life in the Tipton Hotel. I thought this was a little strange, but didn't make much of it. I read one letter from a little boy named Zack who had a brother named Cody and a friend named Maddie. As I read it out loud, my students started laughing hysterically.

It turns out, those little pranksters were impersonating the characters of the Disney Channel show "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody." Not only did I have two letters from "Zack", I also had another one from "Cody"...ayiyiyi. But it was even funnier because one of the letters said the Tipton Hotel was in London, and another said it was in NYC. My oh-so-observant students wrote in their replies, "Nice try- we know the Tipton Hotel is in BOSTON. In English, we call that being a poser."

Oh yeah - the minor commotion wasn't about that. The minor commotion was when I didn't understand a part of a letter (they came mostly in English, since Prof. Sanchez's students are learning English, but there was also some Spanish) and asked a native Spanish speaker to translate. He started to read it out loud, and all the Spanish - speakers started to gag. Basically, the sentence said "I like to eat boogers and vomit" in Spanish...and I had NO IDEA! I guess I need to figure out how to screen the Spanish more carefully.