Otro interludio

(Note a longer new post just below this one.)

Today is Sunday, aka the day when everything is closed (except the churches, haha) and the residencia doesn’t provide meals. Having had an eventful weekend (to come in a later blog post) and needing some downtime after orientation finally ending, just finding food was my big priority for the day. I still had an apple and orange saved up from a few days ago and was crossing my fingers that a few bakeries might be open where I could get something for breakfast. Success, I found one, and got a chocolate “empanadilla” (kind of like a croissant/turnover—made of filo dough, stuffed with a filling that can be either sweet or savory) for the road. Eating on the go is simply not done here, so I decided to take a walk and along the way hopefully find some kind of park where I could sit and eat (sadly, there are very few parks here—practically the only thing missing from this city). I decided to head for Camino de Ronda, a road I’d heard so much about, mainly from IES friends who live along there, which is so long that it apparently goes all the way to—is it Sevilla? Somewhere like that. Basically, I’m not going to try to walk the whole thing any time soon.

I got to where I thought Camino de Ronda ought to be, and the street I found myself on seemed to fit the bill: large, apparently very long, and very residential, just apartment buildings on both sides of the road as far as the eye could see (since I know so many people whose host families live along there I guessed it would be a residential area). But there were no signs saying the name of the road. I decided to walk it anyway. (It was only an hour later that I saw a sign—yes, Camino de Ronda indeed.)

I just went straight. And straight. And straight. For forty-five minutes. Which, you know, when you’re in a city, can really take you far. I just had a really good time seeing what all there was to see. I kept having to remind myself that I was in Spain. I didn’t know where I felt like I was. I was having that kind of déjà vu where you’re feeling echoes of somewhere that you might have imagined, or seen in a dream once. Camino de Ronda, I’m pretty sure, is not known for its scenic beauty (it was a stretch of pure pragmatism), but I enjoyed it.

I never did really find a park, though I know there’s one around there—even though I always have my map on me, I was having a no-map kind of day—but I found a park bench between two big palm trees to finally eat my empanadilla. It was after one, I hadn’t eaten all day, and I was starving. That empanadilla was out of this world. It turned out to actually be Nutella-filled. Nothing could have been tastier.

I finally decided to turn back, and made my way back in the same straight line, but then I had fun taking all sorts of turns, deliberately getting lost, and then finding my way home by feel, exploring how everything connected up.

I don’t need to go further into the blow-by-blow details of my day, but one more thing:

Dinner time came around and I was getting really hungry, and I decided to go out and hope that the supermarket next door was open so I could get some produce. Well, it wasn’t. And neither were any of the other supermarkets I went to. I was really disappointed, and getting a little desperate—I was really hungry, and the only places that were open were a few sit-down restaurants and coffee shops which wouldn’t have real food, and neither fit the bill of what I was looking for.

Just as I was about to call it quits and eat some biscuits I bought for emergency snacking a while back I found a place advertising its Indian take-out. Take-out?! Yes, that was exactly what I wanted! And take-out isn’t a big Spanish idea (they prefer to sit and dine leisurely with friends and have a nice, relaxing social time), so I felt extremely lucky to have found this place, which was open on a Sunday no less.

I went in and the place was empty. I ordered a schwarma, which turned out to be like dönor kabab, and while the man working there was assembling it we got to chatting. We talked for about five minutes, where are you from, how are you liking the city, etcetera etcetera, and then he asked me if I had a boyfriend or any friends here. The ‘boyfriend’ part made me raise an eyebrow a little, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and gave a cheerful, neutral answer about not knowing many people yet but hoping to meet lots. His tone turned somber as he said, “It’s the same with me—I’m all alone.” He sighed, and then muttered, “You’re a really good girl. A really, really good girl.” I thanked him (always happy to practice my Spanish!) and then he said, “Hey, you know…I mean, I’m single, you’re single…You don’t have a boyfriend…You, me…You, me?” It turned into a question. He looked at me, waiting. He couldn’t have been younger than his late thirties, if not in his forties. I just stared at him, uncomprehending. “No,” I said. “Nope.” Luckily it was just about then that my schwarma was done on the grill and I could change the subject by asking how much it was and paying. On my way out he called after me, “Come back soon! See you later!” and I was thinking nope, that’s not happening… The schwarma was delicious, though.

I’ve gotten catcalled (sometimes pretty lewdly) several times here, as well as the lesser version, which is some guy stopping me on the street to say “Wow, you’re so beautiful” in a sweet, polite tone—and then when I keep walking proceeding to say angrily, “Hey, wait! I just want to talk to you! Hey! Come back!” (which makes me a little nervous, but it’s always been during the day on a crowded street), but this was my first taste of the, uh, assertiveness I’ve heard about Spanish men. (Catcalling doesn’t count, because that happens to me all the time in Walla Walla, too.) 

In a total shift of topic, here’s an interesting culturolinguistic distinction for you. My orientation-week Spanish class teacher talked about this with us, and it brought back a suspicion I’d harbored in Slovakia, too. Our teacher told us that in Spanish “por favor” is not used all that often; certainly not to the extent that we use “please” in English. Expressing politeness is instead achieved through, for example, tonal inflection: “¿me da un café?” when said in a light, supplicant way carries the same meaning as “a coffee, please.” “Por favor” is more forceful than “please” in English, and is used alongside requests when you’re really begging for something.

For me, this is a hard line to walk. I don’t want to come off as ingratiating and excessive, but simply saying what would translate to “a pastry” (when ordering in a bakery) or responding to Antonio, the ultra-nice owner of the residencia where I live, when he asks me which dessert I’d like, with “[will you] give me a chocolate mousse?” is difficult—it feels like there’s an obvious omission hanging off the end, the neat capstone that makes any interaction well-mannered and respectful. That’s the culturolinguistic bias I have to overcome, but it’s particularly sensitive when what’s on the line is not just a misconjugation or malapropism, but coming across as rude.

I don’t know if, similarly, “gracias” is used less often in Spanish than “thank you” is in English, but I think that it’s the case in Slovak. I remember my Slovak host mother once remarking to me that “it’s obvious you’re the child of two teachers. You’re so…polite—you say ‘thank you’ all the time…” It was mostly a compliment, but I could tell by the way she said it there was something about the way I said ‘thank you’ so often that it was culturolinguistically excessive. Even understanding that, I inwardly shrugged and kept saying “d’akujem” as much as I would have said “thank you” in the U.S., because I didn’t know the nuances of appropriateness, and always better to err on the side of caution—especially as a foreigner with a limited vocabulary whose smile and effusive displays of appreciation are her biggest/only assets in warming herself to people and staying on their good sides after the inevitable cultural faux pas.

I’ll have to talk to someone about the frequency of “gracias.” For now I’m navigating “por favor” carefully. Unlike in Slovak, I have the linguistic dexterity in Spanish to a degree where I think willfully ignoring this difference in usage is unacceptable. It’s just one of those things that makes me uncertain and uncomfortable while I figure it out. 

In other news, I've just about fleshed out my class schedule (IES classes start tomorrow!). As far as IES classes, I'm taking a general advanced Spanish grammar class (required--I'm super excited), "Lorca and the Andalusian Literary Tradition," and "Islamic Art and Architecture." I'm also doing an internship, which will meet once a week at IES for a more theoretical/discussion component, but the bulk of which will be me helping out and full-on teaching English at a local elementary school. I had thought I would just be assisting or something in the classrooms, but it sounds like it will be more intensive than that, with many teachers fully handing over the classroom reins, and me having to come prepared with lesson plans... Well, that'll be eight hours a week in the classroom. And then for my last class, I'll be taking one at the Universidad de Granada, but I don't know what I'll be taking yet. I had hoped and planned for Arabic, but schedule-wise it doesn't look like it will work out. So I'm considering my options. Classical Arabic does fit with my schedule... It wouldn't help me with learning modern Arabic, and I don't know if there's any modern-Arabic prerequisite, but it sounds so fun, I think I'm going to take it, provided there are no other obstacles.

Love.