And one from a friend ...

A professor friend reports this translation for "stream of consciousness":

"el ‎arroyo de la conciencia"

Which I suppose could also be translated as the brook of conscience! Or maybe creek or rill ...

and of course, it helps to spell the words right in English before looking them up ...

At least this one wasn't hard to figure out. A first-year student writes:

"Mi familia y yo pasamos dos débiles en Puerto Rico."

"two weeks", "two weaks" - it's amazing what a difference one vowel makes!

La mujer era persiana ....

Another intermediate student wrote in a story,

"La mujer era persiana."

I automatically crossed out the "i" and the final "-na", assuming that the student meant to say, "The woman was Persian" and went with the false cognate rather than looking it up to find that it should be "persa."

Then, of course, I stopped, because I realized that the woman being "Persian" made no sense - not an adjective commonly used by modern middle-American college students except when talking about cats, or perhaps Jake Gyllenhaal's recent movie stint as the Prince of Persia. Do they even know that Persia is another name for Iran?

So, more pondering, more re-reading - and then it hit me what the student was trying to say:

"The woman was blind."