Viva Italia!

This week is very busy and will be very fun. Tomorrow is St. Paddy's Day and my friends and I are headed to the Irish bar for some revelry. They also have free tapas there with each drink so it will be great.

Then, Friday morning, I head to Venice to meet up with some friends. From there we go to Florence, Mount Vesuvius/Pompei, and Rome. In Rome, I'll also get to hang out with a friend of a friend who lives there and get to see Rome from his perspective. Very fun! And I can't wait to eat some food that is not Spanish. Bring on the pizza, paninis, pasta, and gelato!

It will also be nice to take a break from class. Our teacher this week and last isn't very effective when it comes to grammar instruction. She's killing our spirits. So, it will be nice to have a break from that.

Best of luck to those who are attempting to negotiate a bargaining agreement today with my former employer!

Sevilla

March 13, 2011 1:02 PM local time

Yesterday, my friends from class, Ida and Adam, and I went to Sevilla on an excursion arranged by a company who does such things for our school and other language schools. In addition to adults from local language schools, there were 18 eighth graders from North Carolina who are in Granada on Spring Break. The students go to a language magnet K-8 school. In K-3, they are taught solely in the new language (Spanish, French, German, Chinese, or Japanese). After third grade, they begin having other a few other lessons in English. So the kids on the trip had been studying Spanish since Kindergarten and seemed to know a lot. They, however, still behaved like eighth graders and I think all the adults on the bus were ready to make them walk the 240 kilometers home from Sevilla.

Sevilla was very pretty and we were all wondering if perhaps that’s where we should have studied. It was very large, however, and I’m sure we were seeing the most picturesque parts. We visited the riverfront, Royal Palace, Cathedral, and Plaza of Spain. The Plaza of Spain was definitely the biggest plaza I’ve ever seen and it had a moat in which one could take a boat ride. The palace was extremely large with mostly Islamic decoration (because the Catholic king admired that style) and huge gardens.

When the trip was concluding, Ida and I decided to use the restroom. The only restrooms in our vicinity were similar to porta-potties but were actually small electrical toilet cabins. You had to pay 20 cents for the door to open (it slid open on its own and appeared to be hydraulic or something) and then you could go in and use the facilities. Something was not functioning right with the “Water Closet” as they call it, however, and the door was open but would not take our coins. So, I went first and I pulled the door shut (difficult but not impossible) and did my business. Ida went next. Again, she was able to slide the door shut with some effort. Shortly into doing her business, however, the door began to slowly open and I was unable to pull it shut. It was me versus the electronic door and I lost. Of course, this was not a normal sized door, it was the handicap WC, so the door was 4-5 feet in length. There was poor Ida doing her business with the 5 foot door open and all in the park staring in. I tried to cover the door with my coat but you can imagine how well this worked. Within ten minutes, we were laughing about it so hard that we were crying.

The ironic thing is, Ida and I had just remarked that things had gone pretty smoothly for us today. In the past, we’ve had some problems with cultural barriers such as:

• Having to pay $20 for FREE tapas
• Going to the Mexican restaurant and having to wait 25 minutes after the scheduled opening time for it to open
• Going to the Mexican restaurant 40 minutes after the posted opening time and being told they would open in 5 minutes
• Going to the Mexican restaurant for 1 euro margaritas and being told that 1 euro margaritas were only for supper and not lunch after having waited for them to open
• Going to the Mexican restaurant at supper and being told the 1 euro margaritas were only for original flavor

There have been others but I cannot recall them at this time. Needless to say, Ida and I should never comment that things are going pretty smoothly or one of us will end up having their ass exposed to a park full of people.

This coming Thursday, I will be heading to Italy to meet up with other teachers and students from my previous job. It should be an interesting time. I am most looking forward to sleeping in a bed larger than twin size and taking some very long very hot showers without feeling guilty.

More Observations

March 5, 2011 12:58 local time

Here are a few things I’ve noticed:

Young women here wear pantyhose. They wear flesh colored panty hose and not only with dresses but with shorts. Although I attempt to respect cultural differences, this is just plain weird. I remember wearing panty hose in middle school and around that time, panty hose went out of fashion for all those under 50 or so. I know of no one my age who wears panty hose even in formal occasions, no less with shorts. We wear tights or leggings but shed the binding and discomfort of panty hose ages ago. Perhaps I can bring about a panty hose revolution while I’m here.

The food here is not that flavorful to me. I realize, of course, that food in different countries is different. I expected there to be more vegetables at meals here than what I would normally eat at home. I expected to eat the big meal of the day in the middle of the afternoon. I expected unusual meats and seafood that I would have to politely decline to try. What I did not expect is that the food would not have much flavor. Perhaps my palate has been conditioned by the plethora of salt in American food but I’m just not tasting much when I eat here. Even the junk food snacks don’t have much flavor. After a few months, perhaps my palate will grow accustomed to this and I will begin to taste more variety in this food.

Siestas are so popular that even the fountains take them. Let me begin by saying that the hours that they keep in Spain are very different than the hours that are typically kept in the US. They stay up much later in the evenings and get up later in the morning. Lunch is between 2 and 4. Most business close around 1 or 2 in the afternoon and reopen around 5 or 6 so that everyone can go home, eat some lunch, and take a siesta. Every time I have discussed the siesta with the Senora or Abuela (Grandma) at my house, their response is always that I must take the siesta. So here, napping is not considered a sign of laziness but rather something that is to be encouraged. Now that, I like. Besides businesses being closed during the siesta and streets generally being empty, I’ve noticed that the fountains (and there are a lot of them) are also turned off at this time.

Spaniards know a lot about the US. When I’ve told people that I was from the US, their first question is always “Which state?” In the beginning, this surprised me. How do the Spaniards know all about our states? I do not know about their regions. As the weeks have passed, the reason for this has become clear. There are a plethora of American television shows on Spanish TV. My teachers have remarked several times about things they thought about the US from TV. The shows are typically dubbed over with Spanish voices although the remote control allows one to push a button to remove the dubbing. Although I haven’t watched much TV yet, some American shows I’ve seen on Spanish TV include:

Friends
All of Nickelodeon including Sponge Bob and iCarly
The entire Disney Channel
All of MTV
Malcolm in the Middle
Twin Peaks
Mad Men
Castle
Scooby Doo
Without a Trace
Criminal Minds
Two and a Half Men
The Simpsons
Family Guy
V (the original series, not the new one)
CSI Miami
CSI New York
CSI (original series in Las Vegas)