Language barrier

I had been under the impression that I was fairly competent at spanish. And it´s true that when I arrived I was fluent in Hola magazine terminology and could name parts of my body. Coming to Ecuador has been something akin to falling into a well of Spanish. The family we are staying with are fantastic but they don´t really speak any english at all and so I had to hit the ground running. Drawing pictures of pineapples and forks will only get you so far. I was doing fairly well yesterday until I tried to explain to the assembled family over dinner that I needed to buy a pair of sunglasses. ´Neccesito comprar las golfas´I proudly announced. A moment of stunned silence and then a roar of laughter. The word I was scrabbling for was ´gafas´(goggles). What I had actually declared to my kindly Catholic hosts was ´I need to buy some whores´. Not even one whore. Whores in the plural. Nice introduction. As my host dad pointed out though, at least I said it at the dinner table and not in a shop. Spanish- one. Lucy-nil.
As part of our volunteering experience we are doing a crash course in the language (20 hours intensive) which I hoped would reduce the number of such incidents but I still managed to substitute the word ´fear´with ´shit´. Miraculous, I think, that of all the inappropriate words in spanish I have discovered two by accident within 48 hours. Good work.
My spanish teacher has the somewhat unorthodox approach of using Lady Gaga to form all her examples and questions. So I have to date described Lady Gaga using the imperfect tense, discussed whether I would like to be her in the conditional tense, and postulated on her next antics in the future tense. In between I have read a pornographic story (to demonstrate the pluperfect tense,with the additional benefit of further expanding my dinner table vocabulary and ensuring I know exactly what to ask my golfas for when I procure them) and learnt the history of Ecuador. Between these fascinating cultural exchanges I have also been given a lot of homework in the form of long lists of irregular verbs. When I asked why all the verbs were irregular she just shrugged and said ´Es la culpa de Espana´. It´s the fault of the Spanish.
Quite.