Game: Un, dos, tres, toca la pared! / Red Light, Green Light

One of the fun parts of learning a new language is discovering things you didn't know about your first language. For example, I'd heard of the game "Red Light, Green Light" before, but I'd never really played it or understood it until watching a Spanish movie (for grownups) named El Orfanato, or The Orphanage. There are a couple of scenes in the film where the game is played, with one being happy and the other being kind of creepy.

Here's a link to the happy scene, and here is a link to the scary scene so you can watch the game being played. And here's a Wiki link describing the game in more detail. It's also known as Statues, and has variants all over the world in a variety of languages. Here is the Spanish language Wiki, which describes a range of Spanish-language variants.

To play it in Spanish, you need at least 2 people, although more is better. One person stands facing a wall, and counts to three, at which point s/he knocks, and says "Touch the wall!" and turns around. While s/he faces the wall, the other players try to approach as quickly as possible, but must stop before the counter turns around. If they're caught, they need to go back to the starting line. The goal is to get to the wall (or counter) without being stopped.

Un, dos, tres, toca la pared!

After watching it in El Orfanato, I decided this was un juego I'd have to play someday. Now we just have to wait until nuestra hija is old enough to try it!