The week before I went to Colombia for the first time, I called my friend Julie and asked for some typically-Colombian phrases that might set me apart from your everyday tourist. “But you are the everyday tourist,” she said.

I re-asked for something outside the generic, “good afternoon,” “may I have a glass of milk,” that sort of thing. I wanted something that might make an impression on, oh, I don’t know, the President. What you should know about Julie in advance of hearing this, is that she becomes terribly dedicated to things, oftentimes too much so for her own good. Request Julie’s help with directions and she’ll most likely lead you there herself no matter how far. Ask what something means at a restaurant and she’ll translate the entire menu front to back. So it was not without surprise that I opened her email to find an attached audio file entitled something like ColombianSlangMatt.mp3.

I would not have been astonished if she had hired the actors and recording studio but as things were, the file was taken from some sort of language school and consisted of two people, a guy and a girl, both of whom spoke extremely fast and in thick Colombian accents.

I memorized most of what was on the file and arrived in Cartangea feeling pretty good about myself. A taxi driver showed me from the airport to my hotel and, without much trouble, I told him it cost a lot of money. “Mucho platiiiiica.”

Once inside the hotel, I struck up a number of conversations with the staff, several of which told me that I was talking like a lady, a young, ghetto one apparently. “You might not want to talk like that too too often,” one of them said.

A number of people laughed at my Colombian Spanish slang that trip but it was never in an embarrassing sort of way. It was more like I had performed some sort of magic trick, like pulled a large piece of furniture from my ass. When I visited Spain for the first time, I was embarrassed and humiliated to speak Spanish. But in Colombia, I was enthused and left after my first visit feeling like I had conquered a small mountain.

This led me to a second, much more substantial phase of Colombian Spanish and that was a Colombian girlfriend who I met in New York City and hung out a bunch with in Panama. The idea here was to prohibit the use of English in all of our conversations. Which is to say, I had given up understanding her in the name of linguistics.

“OK,” Victoria might have said to me. “Pasame un par de pastillas pa que”

I’d then give a quizzical look and predict she had said something about, I don’t know, carrots. “Here,” I’d say. “Here you are,” handing over a bunch of old carrots from the fridge.

I trained a dog once and while he was extremely good at the acts – the sitting, shaking hands, lying down – he’d always confuse the commands. Tell him to sit and he might run and get the newspaper. So I understand how she felt when after about five or ten instances like these that she’d just break out in impeccable English, “This is ridiculous, just give me a fucking Advil!” to which I’d shrug.

“Actually,” I said walking out of the room, “I think I’ll just do this whole Colombian Spanish thing on my own.”