School Supplies

Today at school, I was helping another teacher order supplies for next year. I had to input item numbers into an Excel order form and then the item description and other information would automatically appear, except for the quantity. To get the item numbers, I had to look on another document that was all in Spanish! I know many Spanish words having to do with school supplies, but not everything--however, I thought I could figure most of it out. Plus, when I entered the item numbers into the Excel doc, the descriptions appeared in English.

I started with the easy things: papel, lapices, plumones, borradores, cuadernos, goma, cinta, etc. and when I had just a few items left, I decided to read through the entire list and guess what they could be and then enter the item number into the Excel doc to see what it really was. Of course there were all the usual school supplies, but then I started to see some interesting items: harina (flour--do they use it for something other than cooking?), comida de peces (fish food--I haven´t seen a fish in the school!), and tampons! I thought, "Wow--they buy tampons for their teachers?!?!" Then I typed in the code to the Excel doc and found out that "tampon" is Spanish for ink pad!