When you make an asunto...

Cuando haces asuntos, haces un as de un y tos.

Well, that doesn’t really translate very well.

"When you make an assumption, you make as ass out of u and me" is what I was trying to say.

I was playing ga-ga with the neighborhood kids when one of their older sisters come up and asked me to help her with her English homework. I don’t really like doing this because I feel that I can be more productive and help in more sustainable ways. But I have started my English for Trees program (Ingles para Arborles) in which people promise to plant three trees for every hour of English that I teach. That way, at least the trees will be here when I leave. Now back to my interrupted game of ga-ga.

The girl says that she has English homework due tomorrow. I tell her that I will help her out but that I won’t give her the answers. We discuss what this will entail for a few minutes. I’m holding strong on my “you have to try and translate the words before I help you out because I’m not going to do your homework for you” ground. She is more of the “Do my homework for me so that I don’t have to” camp.

Then she starts complaining about how I’m not helping her. I respond by telling her that I feel I’m helping her more because, instead of just giving her the answers, I’m making her learn the information. Not seeing it this way, she continues to argue. Then the arguing turns into whining, which I don’t need to put up with. She says that she agreed to translate the five pages of English dialogue to Spanish for her group homework because she simply assumed that the North American who lives in her neighborhood, yours truly, would do the work for her.

Bad assumption.