The Festival

 Originally Published Dec. 2012

One of our daughters-in-law is from Acapulco, Mexico.  Aida joined our family in Minnesota on one of the coldest days in March 2007.  Not knowing much English, all I heard from her the first few days was, “muy fréjol, muy fréjol”, which means “very cold, very cold.”  Over the next few months, her English improved and we were able to communicate pretty easily – with a lot of sign language and acting out on our part.

  

Aida is the youngest of eight children and except for one sister, Anna, no one else in her family has a Visa to enter the United States.  So, you can see why Aida was very excited to soon learn that her sister had decided to come to Minnesota to visit and meet our family.

 

Anna planned on staying around 10 days and my husband, Norm, and I quickly created an itinerary to equal a visit from the Queen of England.  We wanted to show her the marvels of Aida’s new hometown, Minneapolis, and the whole state of Minnesota…… which, we thought, would be easy to do since she came in October and the leaves were in full fall color, it wasn’t cold yet, and the mosquitoes were gone!

 

Now, Anna’s English was – well – non existent.  Just like our Spanish.   So, poor Aida became our resident translator – and not a very good one, at best.  We muddled through a few meals and outings – mostly just shaking our heads and laughing – acting as if we actually knew what each one was saying.

 

Well, Norm decided to look in the paper for an event that we could experience without having to talk very much. He found what he liked to call a “two-fer.”  We could attend a Catholic Spanish Mass in south Minneapolis and then experience their Fall Festival right afterwards.   We could walk around, enjoy the weather, play Bingo, do the Cake Walk and other games and most importantly, eat the food.

 

So – off we went.  First, to Mass.  I know that Aida enjoyed being able to participate in the Catholic Mass in her first language and it really gave us an idea of what she had to go through each week trying to understand English.

 

As we headed out of church, we followed the crowd to the building next door – to The Festival!  We walked in and with Aida asking – in Spanish – the location of The Festival, we finally found about 150 people eating in the basement gymnasium.

 

Aida asked for “quatro” (or four) meals and we settled in our chairs.  We thought it was a little strange that most of the people were already done with their meals and were just chatting a bit with each other.  But, we soon got our food and Aida told us the Spanish names for each item.  She asked the server how much we owed and he said “no charge.”  We were very impressed.  Aida learned that many Spanish countries were represented in that room and the people we were sitting with were from Honduras.  But, not being able to converse very well with our new tablemates, Norm and I just nodded and laughed and acted as if we knew what they said to us.

 

After dessert, Norm really looked around and noticed a couple of tables at the very far end of the room.  The tables were loaded with trophies.  We suddenly realized that we were in the wrong room.  We were at a soccer sports award banquet!  Norm looked at me.  I looked at Aida and told her that we had to leave right now since the program was about to start!  So, we gathered our things, nodded to our new friends, dropped our paper plates into the garbage can and quickly got out of Dodge.

 

As we exited the building, I saw a huge sign advertising The Festival that said that everyone was welcomed to enjoy the Festival the following weekend!  Funny thing is – it was written in English!  We laughed all the way home and now every time we see Anna, we ask her if she’d like to go to a Festival.  She nods and laughs and acts like she knows exactly what we are saying.