Educational Experience

We finally got a new home phone 'system'. It came with a new answering machine and, most importantly, two cordless phones whose batteries last longer than 5 minutes. The man of the house, a computer tech for several years, was in charge of getting it going.

I checked the messages tonight. Imagine my surprise to find our answering machine talking in Spanish! Imagine the surprise of those who left messages! I figured I'd be able to get it into English by pressing buttons. The only Spanish I know is my numbers (to 10) and anything Dora's managed to get into my head (like swimming pool and whatever 'vamonos' means). I erased the messages without a problem -- luckily it wasn't made by Google and it didn't try to translate those. However the menu kept saying siete.. -- so I kept pressing 7. I finally gave up and consulted the manual. Coincidentally, the manual that stated the default language would be English. I eventually got the stupid thing to talk to me in the language that is spoken in this country. The siete? Well, it was saying 'press 7 to repeat the menu'. DUH!

I now know how to say 'You have zero messages' in Spanish. It least I think that is what it was saying. It could have been calling me a dumb monkey for all I know; I took German in school.