What's your sign?

In 2010 I volunteered as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language in Mexico. It was the first experience of teaching in a foreign country for both myself and my American teaching partner, Javan. Javan enjoyed photography, and particularly liked taking photos of signs in Spanglish (mixed up Spanish and English), or where the translation into English was just not quite right :)

Here's one I particularly like from our travels together. We were in Cuernavaca when this photo was taken, which I think is the reference to "Kuerna" you'll see below.

It's a little difficult to read, so I'll add the writing here.

HiT uP da Newest! Hottest! sPot in KuErnA 

Parlay wid da Best uh da Best!!!

Prranda

Nigth Club

If U aint'T heRe ////U Ain'T ShIT!!!

What can I say? My guess is it wasn't written by a native English speaker; let's hope not anyway.

Businesses in Lo de Marcos often don't really have any storefront signs. Many small stores, tiendas, are operated from the front of the homes along the street. The store seen below is not from a home, but doesn't have any sign affixed to the building.

However, it does have the sandwich board out front.

OK, so that explains the business. Most days we walk by it there's a young lady at the desk inside, but I rarely see anyone going into the store. Today when we walked by, the store was closed. Greg chuckled at the sign in the window.

Made perfect sense to us. Why have just a boring "closed" sign, like most businesses!

You may have noticed in the storefront window photo above, the reflection of a truck. While Greg cuddled one of his many chihuahua playmates, I sat on the curb in front of the truck.

I was intrigued by the print along the bottom of the picture.

"Llénate de energía con 30 minutos de ejercicio al día." I puzzled over whether eating that doughnut would give you 30 minutes of energy, or whether you needed to do 30 minutes of exercise to burn off one of these doughnuts.

I found the website quoting this exact sentence, and clicked for a translation of the site. It showed "Get yourself pumped 30 minutes of exercise a day." To be honest, I'm still not sure of its meaning. Those doughnuts don't appeal to me anyway so I'm not too concerned.

My favourite sign in this town so far is this, which is painted on the side wall of a building housing a pharmacy. The marking in the left bottom corner is just one area where the paint is just not holding up, but there are many more like it.

So why does this sign make me smile? I'd say it's a long time since this was painted on the building. Why do I think that, you ask? See my white arrow at the bottom? When was the last time you bought rolls of film for a camera? Yep, I think it's been a while since this was painted.

As a side note, I thought bronceadores might be something to do with bronchial medicines, and wondered why it was together with film. Turns out it's suntan lotion. Although translators can cause problems, sometimes guessing the meaning isn't effective either!

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Location: Lo de Marcos, Nayarit, Mexico

Weather: High 78ºF (26ºC) low 71ºF (22ºC)

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