cerrar con llave

I'm always amused by the ways in which Spanish and English are unexpectedly the same, and ways in which they are surprisingly different. Turns out there's not really a word for “lock” in Spanish, at least the way we use it. Instead of saying 'lock the door,' you say, 'close the door with a key.' But there is a word for locking, for example, your phone-although I think it mostly amounts to saying 'the phone is blocked.'

On the other hand, other phrases make perfect sense. Jose will tell me expressions in Spanish, and I'll frequently remark that they also exist in English. And, you can say the floor is hard, but also that you work hard in Spanish—same word, much like in English.

This week I've been sick. On Tuesday morning, Jose and I took a field trip. (Apparently an equivalent word doesn't exist in Spanish, although the idea of saying campoviaje amuses me. Also, they don't take field trips in Guatemala, which may be why they don't have a word for it.) Anyway, we went to the pharmacy to buy medicine. I asked for something for congestion, and they gave me nose drops. So I asked for a pill, and got “Panadol,” which appeared to be akin to Tylenol Cold & Sinus. It amused me because it had the 'GSK' logo on it. I noticed when we came in that the shelves were organized by pharmaceutical company—mostly companies I knew very well (aventis, glaxosmithkline, etc.) but with medicines I'd never heard of before. Anyway, Panadol seems to work just fine, and hopefully I'll get better without developing an ear infection or anything. I really don't want to have to try to go to a doctor in Guatemala.

I've just been trying to take it easy the last few days, and thus haven't done much of anything interesting, unfortunately. I've skipped out on the activities the last few days in order to sleep and rest more.