You Know You're in Spain When...

Tuesday January 22, 2008

Today a Spanish bug bit me. It sounds cool, but it all reality it looks gross, it itches, and now my hand is puffy and red. But it’s really not all that new because the other day another, or maybe the same culprit, bit me on my finger. It must be something with my left hand. Anyway, today’s class went alright. We started a new project in history where we break up into political parties and try to create a Constitution for our new Republic. It should be a lot better than just sitting and listening to a lecture. At one o’clock Sam and I met with Yaye and we went to our Service Learning project for the first time. We ended up walking about 45 minutes and picking up another girl (Stephanie) from William and Mary College who is doing the same thing that we are in Spain. We went and met David, apparently there are a lot of those here, and talked to him for a while about our responsibilities. He seems really nice and said that he is patient, which is always a good quality to have in dealing with Sam and myself. We are working with younger aged Spaniards who have had brain aneurisms or who have other mental and physical disabilities, doing physical therapy in the pool. We go for the first time to the pool on Thursday. It should be an interesting experience, but hopefully it all turns out well. We have to buy bus passes to get to the pool A) because it’s from 7-8pm and B) because it’s about 4 miles away and we aren’t going to make that trek. I was in a pretty bad mood when we got back from that today because the whole situation was kind of frustrating and pretty far away so I was hungry, exhausted and hot on top of that. In the mornings here it’s cold and then it’s hot in the afternoon so it’s hard to dress for both when you have to walk in both different types of weather. During lunch we asked Encarna and Rocio about sexism in Spanish culture for one of our classes and I think we started a family feud. If Spaniards are two things, its passionate and opinionated and they love to debate about thing they are passionate/opinionated about. They went at it for a while and it was pretty funny but more interesting than anything. I think we are going to have to try fish soon because Encarna had a 20 minute conversation about fish with us today. That could be interesting. Since today was lacking excitement I’ve compiled a list of things entitled, “You know you’re in Spain when…” Here goes.

 

You know you’re in Spain when…

…you walk down the street and either step on glass or dog poop.

…you frequently see mullets with dreads.

…you stop before lunch at a café to have a glass of wine with friends.

…everyone around you is smoking.

…there isn’t a day without catcalls.

…a bus almost hit you before 9am.

…you swear every person wakes up in the morning more gorgeous than you, even if you had prepped for 2 hours.

…being blonde is something that is rare.

…there are children still outside at 12 o’clock at night.

…you have to turn the shower water on and off between rinses.

…there are more birds than squirrels.

…you can walk for miles without seeing grass.

…you get honked at, repeatedly.

…you see set of guys holding hands (gay marriage is legal)

…its 70 degrees and people are wearing coats and scarves.

…the children speak better Spanish than you do and make fun of you for it.

…Coke is more expensive than wine.