5 Ch5-Learning How to Speak Spanish

Chapter 5 Learning How to Speak Spanish A few days later, we were in the language lab and Miss Holly was telling us all about Spain. It's a country in Europe, and it's the whole way across the Atlantic Ocean. Miss Holly played her guitar, sang, tap- danced, and told us all kinds of useless information about Spain. Did you know

that Spain is twice the size of Oregon? I didn't know that. Do you care? Me neither. "In Spain," Miss Holly told us, "boys and girls only have to go to school until they are sixteen years old!" "All right!" I said. "I'm moving to Spain!" "Then you'll have to learn to speak Spanish, A.J.," said Miss Holly. I told her I already know how to speak Spanish because I saw this movie called Terminator II where Arnold Schwarzenegger kills a bunch of guys, and before he leaves he says, "Hasta la vista, baby!" My mom told me that means "until we meet again." It was a

cool movie. "That's good, A.J., but you'll have to learn a lot more than that," Miss Holly said. "Let's work on our Spanish vocabu- lary for the pageant." "Yay!" said the girls. "Boo!" said the boys. "The first word we're going to learn

today is 'nose,'" said Miss Holly. "The Spanish word for 'nose' is la nariz," said Miss Holly. "La nariz," we all repeated. "Good," said Miss Holly. "The next word is 'think.' The Spanish word for 'think' is pensar." "Pensar," we all repeated. "Good," said Miss Holly. "The next word is Christmas tree! The Spanish word for 'Christmas tree' is el arbol de Navidad." "El arbol de Navidad," we all repeated. "Good," said Miss Holly. "The next word is 'stuck.' The Spanish word for 'stuck' is pegado."

"Pegado," we all repeated. Miss Holly sure picks weird words. Neil the nude kid raised his hand. "Why do we need to learn those words?" he asked. "Well," Miss Holly said, "what if you're in Spain and you need to say, 'I think I have a Christmas tree stuck to my nose'?" Miss Holly is weird.