Learning the Language

My first memory of the English language is as a First grader at the Colegio Nicolas Bravo, an all girl Catholic school which I would attend from the 1st through 4th grade.
I remember playing outside, holding hands on a circle of girls, chanting the words, Ecky-Becky, soda-cracker, Ecky-Becky boo, Ecky-Becky, soda-cracker, I pick you! without having any knowledge of what any of those words meant. I remember singing songs in the classroom during English class about chickens and hens, doors and windows, non of it making much sense to me at the time.

Then, when I was in the 5th grade we moved to a different neighborhood in our same town, and we met a nice family that lived a couple streets down from us, they were Christian Missionaries from Texas and were living in Mexico at the time. They had 5 children, ranging from the ages 2 to 10. Since they were from Texas they spoke English, they spoke Spanish too, but used English more. My younger sister and I quickly became friends with the children, we enjoyed riding bikes together, playing ball, tag, etc. And I loved mimicking they way they spoke, even if I had no idea of what they were saying or if I was saying it wrong, I loved the way the words formed in my mouth, the softness of the R's, the lingering of the Z's.

Mrs. Klingan (the mother) noticing my interest on their language offered to teach me and the other kids in the neighborhood English, for 1 peso, that was about 10 American cents.
She thought us songs and Bible stories and she thought us Words! Words! I was so in love with all those words "purple" "apple" "car" "zoo", the way they sounded, the way you had to hold your throat and roll your tongue way up high in your palate. I was always quick to try to guess the meaning of this words, sometimes I was right, most times wrong.

I learned so much from this woman, little did I know at the time how much. Those were the most well spent pesos in my whole life.