A few observations about the Spanish...

So far everything has been going great! With work not starting til Monday, I've had some time to run errands, wander, and do fun things. I've only been here a week, but already I've made some observations about the amazing Spanish people.

The Spanish smoke. And I mean ALL the Spanish smoke. Everywhere. All the time. I thought there were a lot of smokers in San Francisco, but oh man was I wrong. I think if I had to make an honest guess of how many adults here smoke (not to mention it seems to be popular with teens, too) I would say 80%. Seriously. If we go out to get dinner, a drink, whatever, I come home and every article of clothing, every inch of my body, and especially my hair, reek of smoke. They smoke inside restaurants and drop their butts on the floor. They smoke while they're walking down the street. The bartender smokes as she's making your drink. As my Spanish friend Jesus warned me as he was having a cigarette, "Don't smoke. It is very bad."

The Spanish keep odd hours. Should you find yourself out and about at 8am or so, you might think you were in a ghost town despite the fact that 3 million people live in Madrid. I noticed this on my first trip here and now I realize why that is. When you eat dinner at ten and rarely go to bed earlier than 3am, you need to sleep in. And take a siesta. Siesta. This is so funny to me. I really can't understand how businesses here make any money! They open at ten, close by two, reopen at five, then close at 8. And they're all closed Sunday. I think the timing has been the hardest part of adjusting for me. I like to eat breakfast at 8am, lunch between noon and 1pm, and dinner at 5pm. I like to wake up somewhat early and go to sleep somewhat early also. That just isn't working here. So we'll see how much my habits change.

The Spanish don't believe in personal space. Introductions and goodbyes are your first warning. The double kiss! I love it. It's much more warm than a handshake. But walking the streets is another story. People make no effort whatsoever to share the sidewalk with you, and they have no problem bumping. They will stand so close to you that you think they might be trying to pickpocket you, even when they're not. When I first came to Spain, I was worried about the proper way to say excuse me, because there are several ways to do it. I asked this question on a Spanish-English translation online forum and a Spaniard wrote back, "I wouldn't worry too much about saying excuse me, because the Spanish don't."

The Spanish have some interesting style. It seems to me to be a world of opposites. My apartment is in the shopping district of Madrid, and I see lots of beautiful women walking down the street with amazing style, in amazing clothes. But I see an equal amount of people rocking raggedy clothes and mullets. Yes, mullets! And even dread lock mullets. And women in MC Hammer pants. I'm not sure where I fit into this mix, but I hope I lean to the former.

The Spanish love dogs. And anyone who knows me, knows that I don't. I have NO idea how they can have dogs if their pisos are anywhere close to the size of mine, but more power to them. I have to say though, that at least the Spanish only take their dogs to the park and the sidewalk, whereas Californians feel they have the right to bring them to restaurants and grocery stores. Yuck.

None of this is to say that I don't like the Spanish, or that their differences are flaws. I just think it's amazing to see how different our cultures are. And I'm curious to see how much I will change as a result, and how much I will resist. Me, eat dinner at ten? I don't think so!

One word makes all the difference

Yesterday I was determined to eat a meal other than Special K. My roommates and I headed out to run errands and find a market. First we went to Vodafone to get SIM cards. I should say that my Spanish is pretty good, but my vocabulary is very small and I don't have the best memory. So I have been getting around well enough. So in Vodafone I explained that we wanted SIM cards and the woman showed us a couple different options and we chose one. When she was ringing us up she said in Spanish, "You can choose a different plan so that you can call people more "barato". I think I looked at her with a blank stare because she grabbed another sales girl to tell me in English. "You can choose a different plan so that you can call people more cheaply." OOOOooooh. Cheap. That's probably a good word to know.

My next task was to find a coin purse. I had way too many euros jangling around in my purse. At this point I would like to thank all my Spanish professors over the years who forced us to describe the word we wanted to use when we didn't know the actual word. It's awkward but it gets the job done. Obviously I didn't know the word for coin purse so at the little trinket shop we went in I asked for a bag that holds coins. She said, "Claro, un monedero." I made the poor sales girl repeat the word about four times so I could say it and remember it. Not really sure if I'll ever need that word again but you never know.

Next we found a market to fill our painfully bare fridge. Grocery shopping here was a really funny experience. The most noticable difference is that apparently the only thing Spaniards really like is red wine and ham. I'm ok with the wine part, but the ham is another story. Chopped ham, sliced ham, roast ham, leg of ham, you can even buy the whole pig. Even when I made it over to frozen vegetables it was peas (with ham), spinach (with ham), mixed veggies (with ham). Not exactly my favorite of the meat family. Luckily I found a package of sliced turkey (the one and only package in the store) and a bag of peas sin jamón. The market also offered just about anything you can imagine in canned form but very little in the way of fruits and veggies. So this could take a little getting used to. When I finally made it to the checkout line there were two older women in front of me with a whole lot of stuff. The checker scanned a huge box of what else, Special K, and it rang up as 3.90. The Spanish women immediately began ranting in Spanish about how the Special K was 3 euros and not 3.90. The checker had to leave the stand and go look for the price only to come back and assure them it was 3.90. They protested further so the checker had to go find her manager in the store (I guess they don't have PA systems here) and finally returned with the guy who was able to convince the señoras that the cereal was indeed 3.90. With that the women shrugged and said, ok, we'll still take it.

After we got home I realized that we didn't have a corkscrew and I figured over the course of 9 months or so we would definitely need one. So I went out on my own to Corte Ingles, which is sort of like Target except 6 floors and way more expensive. I did my homework ahead of time and knew that the word was "sacacorchos". A nice sales lady brought me over to the sacacorchos department and went above and beyond by showing me all the different types of sacacorchos and taking them out of their box and demonstrating how they work and why this one was far better than this other one. As she's showing me them I sneak a peak at the price tags and wonder if these sacacorchos are made of gold. She is explaining how simply fabulous one particular sacacorchos is when I ask, "Yes. But do you have one more barato?"

Bienvenido a Madrid

After about 24 hours of traveling I made it to Madrid. I was able to find my roommates at the airport despite the fact we had never met before and none of us had phones. We jammed all of our bags into a taxi and headed for our new apartment and new life.

We live in the Salamanca barrio, which it seems is a pretty nice place. There are lots of cute boutiques and tapas bars and restaurants. We also live just a few blocks from Retiro Park and I brought my running shoes so maybe I'll put them to use. The "piso" or apartment is darling. VERY small but equally as charming. Everything is already furnished which takes out a lot of the work for us. As much as I hate unpacking, I'm excited to get settled.

I'm a little ashamed to say my first meal in Spain was Special K. We haven't pinned down a market in our area yet so I settled for what the corner store had to offer.

I don't really have plans for the next week (other than studying for the dreaded LSAT which I will be taking here in Madrid on October 4th) so I'm hoping to do a lot of exploring on foot. I miss you all! Pictures to come!