Last night we went over to fiesta maya for mark's birthday and ran into pancho, a man we'd met last year at ruben's parties. he speaks flawless english, even better than ruben.

he was telling us certain things about mexico, that there are communities of japanese that live there and an amish type people, called menonites, a religious sect that oddly enough, my husband used to belong to when he was a kid(long story). somehow (probably with the help of tequilla), this lead us to the the point that even though there are many spanish speaking countries, their cultures are indeed very different. and he told us how it's irritating that non-hispanic people call all hispanic people, mexican.

we got to talking about music and we touched on ricky martin. this got me to thinking about the name of the boy's group he belonged to when he was younger...menudo. i asked pancho why would they name a group after intestine stew? (a popular food of mexico). he said that menudo is an intestine stew in mexico, but the group was formed in puerto rico, and there menudo means "small boy" ahhhh, this made sense to me. he said even the mexicans were upset that the group was given this name, because they too associated it with one of their favorite food and they thought it disrespectful(to the boys).

learn something new every day, i tell you.

that reminded me of a story. one night ibrahima and his friend ahmed were over and we were watching a cops type of show. ibrahima is kind of fascinated with such reality crime shows. in one segment, the cops pulled over a speeding pick-up truck that was driving irratically. the man refused to get out of the truck but the cops kept insisting. finally, the man emerged. he was wearing a bra, dress, and high heel shoes.

ibrahima said, "he's a traveste."

i wasn't sure i'd heard him correctly and said, "what?"

he repeated it, traveste.

i said, "oh, you mean transvestite"

ahmed(who speaks perfect english as well as fairly fluent spanish)said, "yes, that's it, but the french word is traveste"

i explained to them that we have a word in english that sounds exactly the same, travesty, and that it means "not right, as in a travesty of justice"

the irony of the french word for a man dressed in woman's clothing and the english word for "not right" wasn't lost on me.

i tell this story to pancho, who confirms that in spanish, the word for transvestite is also, travesti, also pronounced the same way as travesty.

curious, i looked travesty up in the dictionary, the meaning is given as "grotesque or burlesque"


so if you ever go to france or one of the spanish speaking countries, never use the english word travesty, it might just get you in trouble.